When Donna Dolores after the departure of Mrs. Sepulvida missed the figure of Mr. Jack Hamlin from the plain before her window, she presumed he had followed that lady and would have been surprised to have known that he was at that moment within her castle, drinking aguardiente with no less a personage than the solemn Don Juan Salvatierra. In point of fact, with that easy audacity which distinguished him, Jack had penetrated the courtyard, gained the hospitality of Don Juan without even revealing his name and profession to that usually ceremonious gentleman, and after holding him in delicious fascination for two hours, had actually left him lamentably intoxicated, and utterly oblivious of the character of his guest. Why Jack did not follow up his advantage by seeking an interview with the mysterious SeÑora who had touched him so deeply I cannot say, nor could he himself afterwards determine. A sudden bashfulness and timidity which he had never before experienced in his relations with the sex, tied his own tongue, while Don Juan with the garrulity which inebriety gave to his, poured forth the gossip of the Mission and the household. It is possible also that a certain vague hopelessness, equally novel to Jack, sent him away in lower spirits than he came. It is not remarkable that Donna Dolores knew nothing of the visit of this guest, until three days afterwards, for during that time she was indisposed and did not leave her room, but it was remarkable that on learning it she flew into a paroxysm of indignation and rage that alarmed Don Juan and frightened her attendants.

"And why was I not told of the presence of this strange Americano? Am I a child, holy St. Anthony! that I am to be kept in ignorance of my duty as the hostess of the Blessed Trinity, or are you, Don Juan, my dueÑa? A brave caballero, who, I surmise from your description, is the same that protected me from insult at Mass last Sunday, and he is not to 'kiss my hand?' Mother of God! And his name—you have forgotten?"

In vain Juan protested that the strange caballero had not requested an audience, and that a proper maidenly spirit would have prevented the Donna from appearing, unsought.

"Better that I should have been thought forward—and these Americanos are of different habitude, my uncle—than that the Blessed Trinity should have been misrepresented by the guzzling of aguardiente!"

Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin had not found the climate of San Antonio conducive to that strict repose that his physician had recommended, and left it the next day with an accession of feverish energy that was new to him. He had idled away three days of excessive heat at Sacramento, and on the fourth had flown to the mountains and found himself on the morning of the first cool day at Wingdam.

"Anybody here I know?" he demanded of his faithful henchman, as Pete brought in his clothes, freshly brushed for the morning toilette.

"No, sah!"

"Nor want to, eh?" continued the cynical Jack, leisurely getting out of bed.

Pete reflected. "Dere is two o' dese yar Yeastern tourists—dem folks as is goin' round inspectin' de country—down in de parlour. Jess come over from de Big Trees. I reckon dey's some o' de same party—dem Frisco chaps—Mass Dumphy and de odders haz been unloadin' to. Dey's mighty green, and de boys along de road has been fillin' 'em up. It's jess so much water on de dried apples dat Pete Dumphy's been shovin' into 'em."

Jack smiled grimly. "I reckon you needn't bring up my breakfast, Pete, I'll go down."

The party thus obscurely referred to by Pete, were Mr. and Mrs. Raynor, who had been "doing" the Big Trees, under the intelligent guidance of a San Francisco editor who had been deputised by Mr. Dumphy to represent Californian hospitality. They were exceedingly surprised during breakfast by the entrance of a pale, handsome, languid gentleman, accurately dressed, whose infinite neatness shamed their own bedraggled appearance, and who, accompanied by his own servant, advanced and quietly took a seat opposite the tourists and their guide. Mrs. Raynor at once became conscious of some negligence in her toilette, and after a moment's embarrassment excused herself and withdrew. Mr. Raynor, impressed with the appearance of the stranger, telegraphed his curiosity by elbowing the editor, who, however, for some reason best known to himself, failed to respond. Possibly he recognised the presence of the notorious Mr. Jack Hamlin in the dark-eyed stranger, and may have had ample reasons for refraining from voicing the popular reputation of that gentleman before his face, or possibly he may have been inattentive. Howbeit, after Mr. Hamlin's entrance he pretermitted the hymn of California praise and became reticent and absorbed in his morning paper. Mr. Hamlin waited for the lady to retire, and then, calmly ignoring the presence of any other individual, languidly drew from his pocket a revolver and bowie-knife, and placing them in an easy habitual manner on either side of his plate, glanced carelessly over the table, and then called Pete to his side.

"Tell them," said Jack, quietly, "that I want some large potatoes: ask them what they mean by putting those little things on the table. Tell them to be quick. Is your rifle loaded?"

"Yes, sah," said Pete, promptly, without relaxing a muscle of his serious ebony face.

"Well—take it along with you."

But here the curiosity of Mr. Raynor, who had been just commenting on the really enormous size of the potatoes, got the best of his prudence. Failing to make his companion respond to his repeated elbowings, he leaned over the table toward the languid stranger. "Excuse me, sir," he said, politely, "but did I understand you to say that you thought these potatoes small—that there are really larger ones to be had?"

"It's the first time," returned Jack gravely, "that I ever was insulted by having a whole potato brought to me. I didn't know it was possible before. Perhaps in this part of the country the vegetables are poor. I'm a stranger to this section. I take it you are too. But because I am a stranger I don't see why I should be imposed upon."

"Ah, I see," said the mystified Raynor, "but if I might ask another question—you'll excuse me if I'm impertinent—I noticed that you just now advised your servant to take his gun into the kitchen with him; surely"——

"Pete," interrupted Mr. Hamlin, languidly, "is a good nigger. I shouldn't like to lose him! Perhaps you're right—maybe I am a little over-cautious. But when a man has lost two servants by gunshot wounds inside of three months, it makes him careful."

The perfect unconcern of the speaker, the reticence of his companion, and the dead silence of the room in which this extraordinary speech was uttered, filled the measure of Mr. Raynor's astonishment.

"Bless my soul! this is most extraordinary. I have seen nothing of this," he said, appealing in dumb show to his companion.

Mr. Hamlin followed the direction of his eyes. "Your friend is a Californian and knows what we think of any man who lies, and how most men resent such an imputation, and I reckon he'll endorse me!"

The editor muttered a hasty assent that seemed to cover Mr. Hamlin's various propositions, and then hurriedly withdrew, abandoning his charge to Mr. Hamlin. What advantage Jack took of this situation, what extravagant accounts he gravely offered of the vegetation in Lower California, of the resources of the country, of the reckless disregard of life and property, do not strictly belong to the record of this veracious chronicle. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Raynor found Mr. Hamlin an exceedingly fascinating companion, and later, when the editor had rejoined them, and Mr. Hamlin proceeded to beg that gentleman to warn Mr. Raynor against gambling as the one seductive, besetting sin of California, alleging that it had been the ruin of both the editor and himself, the tourist was so struck with the frankness and high moral principle of his new acquaintance as to insist upon his making one of their party, an invitation that Mr. Hamlin might have accepted but for the intervention of a singular occurrence.

During the conversation he had been curiously impressed by the appearance of a stranger who had entered and modestly and diffidently taken a seat near the door. To Mr. Hamlin this modesty and diffidence appeared so curiously at variance with his superb physique, and the exceptional strength and power shown in every muscle of his body, that with his usual audacity he felt inclined to go forward and inquire "what was his little game?" That he was lying in wait to be "picked up"—the reader must really excuse me if I continue to borrow Mr. Hamlin's expressive vernacular—that his diffidence and shyness was a deceit and intended to entrap the unwary, he felt satisfied, and was proportionably thrilled with a sense of admiration for him. That a rational human being who held such a hand should be content with a small ante, without "raising the other players,"—but I beg the fastidious reader's forgiveness.

He was dressed in the ordinary miner's garb of the Southern mines, perhaps a little more cleanly than the average miner by reason of his taste, certainly more picturesque by reason of his statuesque shapeliness. He wore a pair of white duck trousers, a jumper or loose blouse of the same material, with a low-folded sailor's collar and sailor-knotted neckerchief, which displayed, with an unconsciousness quite characteristic of the man, the full, muscular column of his sunburnt throat, except where it was hidden by a full, tawny beard. His long, sandy curls fell naturally and equally on either side of the centre of his low, broad forehead. His fair complexion, although greatly tanned by exposure, seemed to have faded lately as by sickness or great mental distress, a theory that had some confirmation in the fact that he ate but little. His eyes were downcast, or, when raised, were so shy as to avoid critical examination. Nevertheless his mere superficial exterior was so striking as to attract the admiration of others besides Mr. Hamlin; to excite the enthusiastic attention of Mr. Raynor, and to enable the editor to offer him as a fair type of the mining population. Embarrassed at last by a scrutiny that asserted itself even through his habitual unconsciousness and pre-occupation, the subject of this criticism arose and returned to the hotel verandah, where his pack and mining implements were lying. Mr. Hamlin, who for the last few days had been in a rather exceptional mood, for some occult reason which he could not explain, felt like respecting the stranger's reserve, and quietly lounged into the billiard-room to wait for the coming of the stage-coach. As soon as his back was turned the editor took occasion to offer Mr. Raynor his own estimate of Mr. Hamlin's character and reputation, to correct his misstatements regarding Californian resources and social habits, and to restore Mr. Raynor's possibly shaken faith in California as a country especially adapted to the secure investment of capital.

"As to the insecurity of life," said the editor, indignantly, "it is as safe here as in New York or Boston. We admit that in the early days the country was cursed by too many adventurers of the type of this very gambler Hamlin, but I will venture to say that you will require no better refutation of these calumnies than this very miner whom you admired. He, sir, is a type of our mining population; strong, manly, honest, unassuming, and perfectly gentle and retiring. We are proud, sir, we admit, of such men—eh? Oh, that's nothing—only the arrival of the up-stage!"

It certainly was something more. A momentarily increasing crowd of breathless men were gathered on the verandah before the window and were peering anxiously over each other's head toward a central group, among which towered the tall figure of the very miner of whom they had been speaking. More than that, there was a certain undefined, restless terror in the air, as when the intense conscious passion or suffering of one or two men communicates itself vaguely without speech, sometimes even without visible sign to others. And then Yuba Bill, the driver of the Wingdam coach, strode out from the crowd into the bar-room, drawing from his hands with an evident effort his immense buckskin gloves.

"What's the row, Bill?" said half-a-dozen voices.

"Nothin'," said Bill, gruffly; "only the Sheriff of Calaveras ez kem down with us hez nabbed his man jest in his very tracks."

"When, Bill?"

"Right yer—on this very verandy—furst man he seed!"

"What for?" "Who?" "What hed he bin doin'?" "Who is it?" "What's up?" persisted the chorus.

"Killed a man up at One Horse Gulch, last night," said Bill, grasping the decanter which the attentive bar-keeper had, without previous request, placed before him.

"Who did he kill, Bill?"

"A little Mexican from 'Frisco by the name o' Ramirez."

"What's the man's name that killed him—the man that you took?"

The voice was Jack Hamlin's.

Yuba Bill instantly turned, put down his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and then deliberately held out his great hand with an exhaustive grin. "Dern my skin, ole man, if it ain't you! And how's things, eh? Yer lookin' a little white in the gills, but peart and sassy, ez usual. Heerd you was kinder off colour, down in Sacramento lass week. And it's you, ole fell, and jest in time! Bar-keep—hist that pizen over to Jack. Here to ye agin, ole man! But I'm glad to see ye!"

The crowd hung breathless over the two men—awestruck and respectful. It was a meeting of the gods—Jack Hamlin and Yuba Bill. None dare speak. Hamlin broke the silence at last, and put down his glass.

"What," he asked, lazily, yet with a slight colour on his cheek, "did you say was the name of the chap that fetched that little Mexican?"

"Gabriel Conroy," said Bill.

CHAPTER II.

MR. HAMLIN TAKES A HAND.

The capture had been effected quietly. To the evident astonishment of his captor, Gabriel had offered no resistance, but had yielded himself up with a certain composed willingness, as if it were only the preliminary step to the quicker solution of a problem that was sure to be solved. It was observed, however, that he showed a degree of caution that was new to him—asking to see the warrant, the particulars of the discovery of the body, and utterly withholding that voluble explanation or apology which all who knew his character confidently expected him to give, whether guilty or innocent—a caution which, accepted by them as simply the low cunning of the criminal, told against him. He submitted quietly to a search that, however, disclosed no concealed weapon or anything of import. But when a pair of handcuffs were shown him, he changed colour, and those that were nearest to him saw that he breathed hurriedly, and hesitated in the first words of some protest that rose to his lips. The sheriff, a man of known intrepidity, who had the rapid and clear intuition that comes with courageous self-possession noticed it also, and quietly put the handcuffs back in his pocket.

"I reckon there's no use for 'em here; ef you're willin' to take the risks, I am."

The eyes of the two men met, and Gabriel thanked him. In that look he recognised and accepted the fact that on a motion to escape he would be instantly killed.

They were to return with the next stage, and in the interval Gabriel was placed in an upper room, and securely guarded. Here, falling into his old apologetic manner, he asked permission to smoke a pipe, which was at once granted by his good-humoured guard, and then threw himself at full length upon the bed. The rising wind rattled the windows noisily, and entering tossed the smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe in fitful waves about the room. The guard, who was much more embarrassed than his charge, was relieved of an ineffectual attempt to carry on a conversation suitable to the occasion by Gabriel's simple directness—

"You needn't put yourself out to pass the time o' day with me," he said, gently, "that bein' extry to your reg'lar work. Ef you hev any friends ez you'd like to talk to in your own line, invite 'em in, and don't mind me."

But here the guard's embarrassment was further relieved by the entrance of Joe Hall, the sheriff.

"There's a gentleman here to speak with you," he said to Gabriel, "he can stay until we're ready to go." Turning to the guard, he added, "You can take a chair outside the door in the hall. It's all right, it's the prisoner's counsel."

At the word Gabriel looked up. Following the sheriff, Lawyer Maxwell entered the room. He approached Gabriel, and extended with grave cordiality a hand that had apparently wiped from his mouth the last trace of mirthfulness at the door.

"I did not expect to see you again so soon, Gabriel, but as quickly as the news reached me, and I heard that our friend Hall had a warrant for you, I started after him. I would have got here before him, but my horse gave out." He paused, and looked steadily at Gabriel. "Well!"

Gabriel looked at him in return, but did not speak.

"I supposed you would need professional aid," he went on, with a slight hesitation, "perhaps mine—knowing that I was aware of some of the circumstances that preceded this affair."

"Wot circumstances?" asked Gabriel, with the sudden look of cunning that had before prejudiced his captors.

"For Heaven's sake, Gabriel," said Maxwell, rising with a gesture of impatience, "don't let us repeat the blunder of our first interview. This is a serious matter; may be very serious to you. Think a moment. Yesterday you sought my professional aid to deed to your wife all your property, telling me that you were going away never to return to One Horse Gulch. I do not ask you now why you did it. I only want you to reflect that I am just now the only man who knows that circumstance—a circumstance that I can tell you as a lawyer is somewhat important in the light of the crime that you are now charged with."

Maxwell waited for Gabriel to speak, wiping away as he waited the usual smile that lingered around his lips. But Gabriel said nothing.

"Gabriel Conroy," said Lawyer Maxwell, suddenly dropping into the vernacular of One Horse Gulch, "are you a fool?"

"Thet's so," said Gabriel, with the simplicity of a man admitting a self-evident proposition, "Thet's so; I reckon I are."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Maxwell, again swiftly turning upon him, "if you were!" He stopped, as if ashamed of his abruptness, and said more quietly and persuasively, "Come, Gabriel, if you won't confess to me, I suppose that I must to you. Six months ago I thought you an impostor. Six months ago the woman who is now your wife charged you with being an impostor; with assuming a name and right that did not belong to you; in plain English, said that you had set yourself up as Gabriel Conroy, and that she, who was Grace Conroy, the sister of the real Gabriel, knew that you lied. She substantiated all this by proofs; hang it," continued Maxwell, appealing in dumb show to the walls, "there isn't a lawyer living as wouldn't have said it was a good case, and been ready to push it in any court. Under these circumstances I sought you, and you remember how. You know the result of that interview. I can tell you now that if there ever was a man who palpably confessed to guilt when he was innocent, you were that man. Well, after your conduct there was explained by Olly, without, however, damaging the original evidence against you, or prejudicing her rights, this woman came to me and said that she had discovered that you were the man who had saved her life at the risk of your own, and that for the present she could not, in delicacy, push her claim. When afterwards she told me that this gratitude had—well, ripened into something more serious, and that she had engaged herself to marry you, and so condone your offence, why, it was woman-like and natural, and I suspected nothing. I believed her story—believed she had a case. Yes, sir; the last six months I have looked upon you as the creature of that woman's foolish magnanimity. I could see that she was soft on you, and believed that you had fooled her. I did, hang me! There, if you confess to being a fool, I do to having been an infernal sight bigger one."

He stopped, erased the mirthful past with his hand, and went on—

"I began to suspect something when you came to me yesterday with this story of your going away, and this disposal of your property. When I heard of the murder of this stranger—one of your wife's witnesses to her claim—near your house, your own flight, and the sudden disappearance of your wife, my suspicions were strengthened. And when I read this note from your wife, delivered to you last night by one of her servants, and picked up early this morning near the body, my suspicions were confirmed."

As he finished he took from his pocket a folded paper and handed it to Gabriel. He received it mechanically, and opened it. It was his wife's note of the preceding night. He took out his knife, still holding the letter, and with its blade began stirring the bowl of his pipe. Then after a pause, he asked cautiously—

"And how did ye come by this yer?"

"It was found by Sal Clark, brought to Mrs. Markle, and given to me. Its existence is known only to three people, and they are your friends."

There was another pause, in which Gabriel deliberately stirred the contents of his pipe. Mr. Maxwell examined him curiously.

"Well," he said, at last, "what is your defence?"

Gabriel sat up on the bed and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the bedpost to loosen some refractory encrustation.

"Wot," he asked, gravely, "would be your idee of a good defence? Axin ye ez a lawyer having experin's in them things, and reck'nin' to pay ez high ez eny man fo' the same, wot would you call a good defence?" And he gravely laid himself down again in an attitude of respectful attention.

"We hope to prove," said Maxwell, really smiling, "that when you left your house and came to my office the murdered man was alive and at his hotel; that he went over to the hill long before you did; that you did not return until the evening—after the murder was committed, as the 'secret' mentioned in your wife's mysterious note evidently shows. That for some reason or other it was her design to place you in a suspicious attitude. That the note shows that she refers to some fact of which she was cognisant and not yourself."

"Suthin' that she knowed, and I didn't get to hear," translated Gabriel, quietly.

"Exactly! Now you see the importance of that note."

Gabriel did not immediately reply, but slowly lifted his huge frame from the bed, walked to the open window, still holding the paper in his hands, deliberately tore it into the minutest shreds before the lawyer could interfere, and then threw it from the window.

"Thet paper don't 'mount ter beans, no how!" he said, quietly but explanatively as he returned to the bed.

It was Lawyer Maxwell's turn to become dumb. In his astonished abstraction he forgot to wipe his mouth, and gazed at Gabriel with his nervous smile as if his client had just perpetrated a practical joke of the first magnitude.

"Ef it's the same to you, I'll just gin ye me idee of a de-fence," said Gabriel, apologetically, relighting his pipe, "allowin' o' course that you knows best, and askin' no deduckshun from your charges for advice. Well, you jess stands up afore the jedge, and you slings 'em a yarn suthin' like this: 'Yer's me, for instans,' you sez, sez you, 'ez gambols—gambols very deep—jess fights the tiger, wharever and whenever found, the same bein' onbeknownst ter folks gin'rally, and spechil te my wife, ez was July. Yer's me been gambolin' desprit with this yer man, Victyor Ramyirez, and gets lifted bad! and we hez, so to speak, a differculty about some pints in the game. I allows one thing, he allows another, and this yer man gives me the lie and I stabs him!' Stop—hole your hosses!" interjected Gabriel, suddenly, "thet looks bad, don't it? he bein' a small man, a little feller 'bout your size. No! Well, this yer's the way we puts it up: 'Seving men—seving—friends o' his, comes at me, permiskis like, one down, and nex' comes on, and we hez it mighty lively thar fur an hour, until me, bein' in a tight place, hez to use a knife and cuts this yer man bad!' Thar, that's 'bout the thing! Now ez to my runnin' away, you sez, sez you, ez how I disremembers owin' to the 'citement that I hez a 'pintent in Sacramento the very nex' day, and waltzes down yer to keep it, in a hurry. Ef they want to know whar July ez, you sez she gits wild on my not comin' home, and starts that very night arter me. Thar, thet's 'bout my idee—puttin' it o' course in your own shape, and slingin' in them bits o' po'try and garbage, and kinder sassin' the plaintiff's counsel, ez you know goes down afore a jedge and jury."

Maxwell rose hopelessly,—"Then, if I understand you, you intend to admit"——

"Thet I done it? In course!" replied Gabriel; "but," he added, with a cunning twinkle in his eye, "justifybly—justifyble homyside, ye mind!—bein' in fear o' my life from seving men. In course," he added, hurriedly, "I can't identify them seving strangers in the dark, so thar's no harm or suspicion goin' to be done enny o' the boys in the Gulch."

Maxwell walked gravely to the window, and stood looking out without speaking. Suddenly he turned upon Gabriel with a brighter face and more earnest manner. "Where's Olly?"

Gabriel's face fell. He hesitated a moment. "I was on my way to the school in Sacramento whar she iz."

"You must send for her—I must see her at once!"

Gabriel laid his powerful hand on the lawyer's shoulder. "She izn't—that chile—to knows anythin' o' this. You hear?" he said, in a voice that began in tones of deprecation, and ended in a note of stern warning.

"How are you to keep it from her?" said Maxwell, as determinedly. "In less than twenty-four hours every newspaper in the state will have it—with their own version and comments. No; you must see her. She must hear it first from your own lips."

"But—I—can't—see—her just now," said Gabriel, with a voice that for the first time during their interview faltered in its accents.

"Nor need you," responded the lawyer, quickly. "Trust that to me. I will see her, and you shall afterwards. You need not fear I will prejudice your case. Give me the address! Quick!" he added, as the sound of footsteps and voices approaching the room, came from the hall. Gabriel did as he requested. "Now one word," he continued hurriedly, as the footsteps halted at the door.

"Yes," said Gabriel.

"As you value your life and Olly's happiness, hold your tongue."

Gabriel nodded with cunning comprehension. The door opened to Mr. Jack Hamlin, diabolically mischievous, self-confident and audacious! With a familiar nod to Maxwell he stepped quickly before Gabriel and extended his hand. Simply, yet conscious of obeying some vague magnetic influence, Gabriel reached out his own hand and took Jack's white, nervous fingers in his own calm, massive grasp.

"Glad to see you, pard!" said that gentleman, showing his white teeth and reaching up to clap his disengaged hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Glad to see you, old boy,—even if you have cut in and taken a job out of my hands that I was rather lyin' by to do myself. Sooner or later I'd have fetched that Mexican—if you hadn't dropped into my seat and taken up my hand. Oh, it's all right, Mack!" he said, intercepting the quick look of caution that Maxwell darted at his client, "don't do that. We're all friends here. If you want me to testify, I'll take my oath that there hasn't been a day this six months that that infernal hound, Ramirez, wasn't jest pantin' to be planted in his tracks! I can hardly believe I ain't done it myself." He stopped, partly to enjoy the palpable uneasiness of Maxwell, and perhaps in some admiration of Gabriel's physique.

Maxwell quickly seized this point of vantage. "You can do your friend here a very great service," he said to Jack, lowering his voice as he spoke.

Jack laughed. "No, Mack, it won't do! They wouldn't believe me! There ain't judge or jury you could play that on!"

"You don't understand me," said Maxwell, laughing a little awkwardly. "I didn't mean that, Jack. This man was going to Sacramento to see his little sister"——

"Go on," said Jack, with much gravity; "of course he was. I know that. 'Dear brother, dear brother, come home with me now!' Certainly. So'm I. Goin' to see an innocent little thing 'bout seventeen years old, blue eyes and curly hair! Always go there once a week. Says he must come! Says she'll"——he stopped in the full tide of his irony, for, looking up, he caught a glimpse of Gabriel's simple, troubled face and sadly reproachful eyes. "Look here," said Jack, turning savagely on Maxwell, "what are you talking about anyway?"

"I mean what I say," returned Maxwell, quickly. "He was going to see his sister—a mere child. Of course he can't go now. But he must see her—if she can be brought to him. Can you—will you do it?"

Jack cast another swift glance at Gabriel. "Count me in," he said, promptly; "when shall I go?"

"Now—at once."

"All right. Where shall I fetch her to?"

"One Horse Gulch."

"The game's made," said Jack, sententiously. "She'll be there by sundown to-morrow." He was off like a flash, but as swiftly returned, and called Maxwell to the door. "Look here," he said, in a whisper, "p'r'aps it would be as well if the sheriff didn't know I was his friend," he went on, indicating Gabriel with a toss of his head and a wink of his black eye, "because, you see, Joe Hall and I ain't friends. We had a little difficulty, and some shootin' and foolishness down at Marysville last year. Joe's a good, square man, but he ain't above prejudice, and it might go against our man."

Maxwell nodded, and Jack once more darted off.

But his colour was so high, and his exaltation so excessive, that when he reached his room his faithful Pete looked at him in undisguised alarm. "Bress us—it tain't no whisky, Mars Jack, arter all de doctors tole you?" he said, clasping his hands in dismay.

The bare suggestion was enough for Jack in his present hilarious humour. He instantly hiccuped, lapsed wildly over against Pete with artfully simulated alcoholic weakness, tumbled him on the floor, and grasping his white, woolly head, waved over it a boot-jack, and frantically demanded "another bottle." Then he laughed; as suddenly got up with the greatest gravity and a complete change in his demeanour, and wanted to know, severely, what he, Pete, meant by lying there on the floor in a state of beastly intoxication?

"Bress me! Mars Jack, but ye did frighten me. I jiss allowed dem tourists downstairs had been gettin' ye tight."

"You did—you degraded old ruffian! If you'd been reading Volney's 'Ruins,' or reflectin' on some of those moral maxims that I'm just wastin' my time and health unloading to you, instead of making me the subject of your inebriated reveries, you wouldn't get picked up so often. Pack my valise, and chuck it into some horse and buggy—no matter whose. Be quick."

"Is we gwine to Sacramento, Mars Jack?"

"We? No, sir. I'm going—alone! What I'm doing now, sir, is only the result or calm reflection—of lying awake nights taking points and jest spottin' the whole situation. And I'm convinced, Peter, that I can stay with you no longer. You've been hackin' the keen edge of my finer feelin's; playin' it very low down on my moral and religious nature, generally ringin' in a cold deck on my spiritual condition for the last five years. You've jest cut up thet rough with my higher emotions thet there ain't enough left to chip in on a ten-cent ante. Five years ago," continued Jack, coolly, brushing his curls before the glass, "I fell into your hands a guileless, simple youth, in the first flush of manhood, knowin' no points, easily picked up on my sensibilities, and travellin', so to speak, on my shape! And where am I now? Echo answers 'where?' and passes for a euchre! No, Peter, I leave you to-night. Wretched misleader of youth, gummy old man with the strawberry eyebrows, farewell!"

Evidently this style of exordium was no novelty to Pete, for without apparently paying the least attention to it, he went on surlily packing his master's valise. When he had finished he looked up at Mr. Hamlin, who was humming, in a heart-broken way, "Yes, we must part," varied by occasional glances of exaggerated reproach at Pete, and said, as he shouldered the valise—

"Dis yer ain't no woman foolishness, Mars Jack, like down at dat yar Mission?"

"Your suggestion, Peter," returned Jack, with dignity, "emanates from a moral sentiment debased by Love Feasts and Camp Meetings, and an intellect weakened by Rum and Gum and the contact of Lager Beer Jerkers. It is worthy of a short-card sharp and a keno flopper, which I have, I regret to say, long suspected you to be. Farewell! You will stay here until I come back. If I don't come back by the day after to-morrow, come to One Horse Gulch. Pay the bill, and don't knock down for yourself more than seventy-five per cent. Remember I am getting old and feeble. You are yet young, with a brilliant future before you. Git."

He tossed a handful of gold on the bed, adjusted his hat carefully over his curls, and strode from the room. In the lower hall he stopped long enough to take aside Mr. Raynor, and with an appearance of the greatest conscientiousness, to correct an error of two feet in the measurements he had given him that morning of an enormous pine tree in whose prostrate trunk he, Mr. Hamlin, had once found a peaceful, happy tribe of one hundred Indians living. Then lifting his hat with marked politeness to Mrs. Raynor, and totally ignoring the presence of Mr. Raynor's mentor and companion, he leaped lightly into the buggy and drove away.

"An entertaining fellow," said Mr. Raynor, glancing after the cloud of dust that flew from the untarrying wheels of Mr. Hamlin's chariot.

"And so gentlemanly," smiled Mrs. Raynor.

But the journalistic conservator of the public morals of California, in and for the city and county of San Francisco, looked grave, and deprecated even that feeble praise of the departed. "His class are a curse to the country. They hold the law in contempt; they retard by the example of their extravagance the virtues of economy and thrift; they are consumers and not producers; they bring the fair fame of this land into question by those who foolishly take them for a type of the people."

"But, dear me," said Mrs. Raynor, pouting, "where your gamblers and bad men are so fascinating, and your honest miners are so dreadfully murderous, and kill people, and then sit down to breakfast with you as if nothing had happened, what are you going to do?"

The journalist did not immediately reply. In the course of some eloquent remarks, as unexceptionable in morality as in diction, which I regret I have not space to reproduce here, he, however, intimated that there was still an Unfettered Press, which "scintillated" and "shone" and "lashed" and "stung" and "exposed" and "tore away the veil," and became at various times a Palladium and a Watchtower, and did and was a great many other remarkable things peculiar to an Unfettered Press in a pioneer community, when untrammelled by the enervating conditions of an effete civilisation.

"And what have they done with the murderer?" asked Mr. Raynor, repressing a slight yawn.

"Taken him back to One Horse Gulch half an hour ago. I reckon he'd as lief stayed here," said a bystander. "From the way things are pintin', it looks as if it might be putty lively for him up thar!"

"What do you mean?" asked Raynor, curiously.

"Well, two or three of them old Vigilantes from Angel's passed yer a minit ago with their rifles, goin' up that way," returned the man, lazily. "Mayn't be nothing in it, but it looks mighty like"——

"Like what?" asked Mr. Raynor, a little nervously.

"Lynchin'!" said the man.

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH MR. DUMPHY TAKES POINSETT INTO HIS CONFIDENCE.

The cool weather of the morning following Mr. Dumphy's momentous interview with Colonel Starbottle, contributed somewhat to restore the former gentleman's tranquillity, which had been considerably disturbed. He had, moreover, a vague recollection of having invited Colonel Starbottle to visit him socially, and a nervous dread of meeting this man, whose audacity was equal to his own, in the company of others. Braced, however, by the tonic of the clear exhilarating air, and sustained by the presence of his clerks and the respectful homage of his business associates, he despatched a note to Arthur Poinsett requesting an interview. Punctually at the hour named that gentleman presented himself, and was languidly surprised when Mr. Dumphy called his clerk and gave positive orders that their interview was not to be disturbed and to refuse admittance to all other visitors. And then Mr. Dumphy, in a peremptory, practical statement which his business habits and temperament had brought to a perfection that Arthur could not help admiring, presented the details of his interview with Colonel Starbottle. "Now, I want you to help me. I have sent to you for that business purpose. You understand, this is not a matter for the Bank's regular counsel. Now what do you propose?"

"First, let me ask you, do you believe your wife is living?"

"No," said Dumphy, promptly, "but of course I don't know."

"Then let me relieve your mind at once, and tell you that she is not."

"You know this to be a fact?" asked Dumphy.

"I do. The body supposed to be Grace Conroy's and so identified, was your wife's. I recognised it at once, knowing Grace Conroy to have been absent at the culmination of the tragedy."

"And why did you not correct the mistake?"

"That is my business," said Arthur, haughtily, "and I believe I have been invited here to attend to yours. Your wife is dead."

"Then," said Mr. Dumphy, rising with a brisk business air, "if you are willing to testify to that fact, I reckon there is nothing more to be done."

Arthur did not rise, but sat watching Mr. Dumphy with an unmoved face. After a moment Mr. Dumphy sat down again, and looked aggressively but nervously at Arthur. "Well," he said, at last.

"Is that all?" asked Arthur, quietly; "are you willing to go on and establish the fact?"

"Don't know what you mean!" said Dumphy, with an attempted frankness which failed signally.

"One moment, Mr. Dumphy. You are a shrewd business man. Now do you suppose the person—whoever he or she may be, who has sent Colonel Starbottle to you, relies alone upon your inability to legally prove your wife's death? May they not calculate somewhat on your indisposition to prove it legally; on the theory that you'd rather not open the case, for instance?"

Mr. Dumphy hesitated a moment and bit his lip. "Of course," he said, shortly, "there'd be some talk among my enemies about my deserting my wife"——

"And child," suggested Arthur.

"And child," repeated Dumphy, savagely, "and not coming back again—there'd be suthin' in the papers about it, unless I paid 'em, but what's that!—deserting one's wife isn't such a new thing in California."

"That is so," said Arthur, with a sarcasm that was none the less sincere because he felt its applicability to himself.

"But we're not getting on," said Mr. Dumphy, impatiently. "What's to be done? That's what I've sent to you for."

"Now that we know it is not your wife—we must find out who it is that stands back of Colonel Starbottle. It is evidently some one who knows, at least, as much as we do of the facts; we are lucky if they know no more. Can you think of any one? Who are the survivors? Let's see; you, myself, possibly Grace"——

"It couldn't be Grace Conroy, really alive!" interrupted Dumphy hastily.

"No," said Arthur, quietly, "you remember she was not present at the time."

"Gabriel?"

"I hardly think so. Besides, he is a friend of yours."

"It couldn't be"—Dumphy stopped in his speech, with a certain savage alarm in his looks. Arthur noticed it—and quietly went on.

"Who 'couldn't' it be?"

"Nothing—nobody. I was only thinking if Gabriel or somebody could have told the story to some designing rascal."

"Hardly—in sufficient detail."

"Well," said Dumphy, with his coarse bark-like laugh, "if I've got to pay to see Mrs. Dumphy decently buried, I suppose I can rely upon you to see that it's done without a chance of resurrection. Find out who Starbottle's friend is and how much he or she expects. If I've got to pay for this thing I'll do it now, and get the benefit of absolute silence. So I'll leave it in your hands," and he again rose as if dismissing the subject and his visitor, after his habitual business manner.

"Dumphy," said Arthur, still keeping his own seat, and ignoring the significance of Dumphy's manner. "There are two professions that suffer from a want of frankness in the men who seek their services. Those professions are Medicine and the Law. I can understand why a man seeks to deceive his physician, because he is humbugging himself; but I can't see why he is not frank to his lawyer! You are no exception to the rule. You are now concealing from me, whose aid you have sought, some very important reason why you wish to have this whole affair hidden beneath the snow of Starvation Camp."

"Don't know what you're driving at," said Dumphy. But he sat down again.

"Well, listen to me, and perhaps I can make my meaning clearer. My acquaintance with the late Dr. Devarges began some months before we saw you. During our intimacy he often spoke to me of his scientific discoveries, in which I took some interest, and I remember seeing among his papers frequent records and descriptions of localities in the foot-hills, which he thought bore the indications of great mineral wealth. At that time the Doctor's theories and speculations appeared to me to be visionary, and the records of no value. Nevertheless, when we were shut up in Starvation Camp, and it seemed doubtful if the Doctor would survive his discoveries, at his request I deposited his papers and specimens in a cairn at Monument Point. After the catastrophe, on my return with the relief party to camp, we found that the cairn had been opened by some one and the papers and specimens scattered on the snow. We supposed this to have been the work of Mrs. Brackett, who, in search of food, had broken the cairn, taken out the specimens, and died from the effects of the poison with which they had been preserved."

He paused and looked at Dumphy, who did not speak.

"Now," continued Arthur, "like all Californians I have followed your various successes with interest and wonder. I have noticed, with the gratification that all your friends experience, the singular good fortune which has distinguished your mining enterprises, and the claims you have located. But I have been cognisant of a fact, unknown I think to any other of your friends, that nearly all of the localities of your successful claims, by a singular coincidence, agree with the memorandums of Dr. Devarges!"

Dumphy sprang to his feet with a savage, brutal laugh. "So," he shouted, coarsely, "that's the game, is it! So it seems I'm lucky in coming to you—no trouble in finding this woman now, hey? Well, go on, this is getting interesting; let's hear the rest! What are your propositions, what if I refuse, hey?"

"My first proposition," said Arthur, rising to his feet with a cold wicked light in his grey eyes, "is that you shall instantly take that speech back and beg my pardon! If you refuse, by the living God, I'll throttle you where you stand!"

For one wild moment all the savage animal in Dumphy rose, and he instinctively made a step in the direction of Poinsett. Arthur did not move. Then Mr. Dumphy's practical caution asserted itself. A physical personal struggle with Arthur would bring in witnesses—witnesses perhaps of something more than that personal struggle. If he were victorious, Arthur, unless killed outright, would revenge himself by an exposure. He sank back in his chair again. Had Arthur known the low estimate placed upon his honour by Mr. Dumphy he would have been less complacent in his victory.

"I didn't mean to suspect you," said Dumphy at last, with a forced smile, "I hope you'll excuse me. I know you're my friend. But you're all wrong about these papers; you are, Poinsett, I swear. I know if the fact were known to outsiders it would look queer if not explained. But whose business is it, anyway, legally, I mean?"

"No one's, unless Devarges has friends or heirs."

"He hadn't any."

"There's that wife!"

"Bah!—she was divorced!"

"Indeed! You told me on our last interview that she really was the widow of Devarges."

"Never mind that now," said Dumphy, impatiently. "Look here! You know as well as I do that no matter how many discoveries Devarges made, they weren't worth a d—n if he hadn't done some work on them—improved or opened them."

"But that is not the point at issue just now," said Arthur. "Nobody is going to contest your claim or sue you for damages. But they might try to convict you of a crime. They might say that breaking into the cairn was burglary, and the taking of the papers theft."

"But how are they going to prove that?"

"No matter. Listen to me, and don't let us drift away from the main point. The question that concerns you is this. An impostor sets up a claim to be your wife; you and I know she is an impostor, and can prove it. She knows that, but knows also that in attempting to prove it you lay yourself open to some grave charges which she doubtless stands ready to make."

"Well, then, the first thing to do is to find out who she is, what she knows, and what she wants, eh?" said Dumphy.

"No," said Arthur, quietly, "the first thing to do is to prove that your wife is really dead, and to do that you must show that Grace Conroy was alive when the body purporting to be hers, but which was really your wife's, was discovered. Once establish that fact and you destroy the credibility of the Spanish reports, and you need not fear any revelation from that source regarding the missing papers. And that is the only source from which evidence against you can be procured. But when you destroy the validity of that report, you of course destroy the credibility of all concerned in making it. And as I was concerned in making it, of course it won't do for you to put me on the stand."

Notwithstanding Dumphy's disappointment, he could not help yielding to a sudden respect for the superior rascal who thus cleverly slipped out of responsibility. "But," added Arthur, coolly, "you'll have no difficulty in establishing the fact of Grace's survival by others."

Dumphy thought at once of Ramirez. Here was a man who had seen and conversed with Grace when she had, in the face of the Spanish Commander, indignantly asserted her identity and the falsity of the report. No witness could be more satisfactory and convincing. But to make use of him he must first take Arthur into his confidence; must first expose the conspiracy of Madame Devarges to personate Grace, and his own complicity with the transaction. He hesitated. Nevertheless, he had been lately tortured by a suspicion that the late Madame Devarges was in some way connected with the later conspiracy against himself, and he longed to avail himself of Arthur's superior sagacity, and after a second reflection he concluded to do it. With the same practical conciseness of statement that he had used in relating Colonel Starbottle's interview with himself, he told the story of Madame Devarges' brief personation of Grace Conroy, and its speedy and felicitous ending in Mrs. Conroy. Arthur listened with unmistakable interest and a slowly brightening colour. When Dumphy had concluded he sat for a moment apparently lost in thought.

"Well?" at last said Dumphy, interrogatively and impatiently.

Arthur started. "Well," he said, rising, and replacing his hat with the air of a man who had thoroughly exhausted his subject, "your frankness has saved me a world of trouble."

"How?" said Dumphy.

"There is no necessity for looking any further for your alleged wife. She exists at present as Mrs. Conroy, alias Madame Devarges, alias Grace Conroy. Ramirez is your witness. You couldn't have a more willing one."

"Then my suspicions are correct."

"I don't know on what you based them. But here is a woman who has unlimited power over men, particularly over one man, Gabriel!—who alone, of all men but ourselves, knows the facts regarding your desertion of your wife in Starvation Camp, her death, and the placing of Dr. Devarges' private papers by me in the cairn. He knows, too, of your knowledge of the existence of the cairn, its locality, and contents. He knows this because he was in the cabin that night when the Doctor gave me his dying injunctions regarding his property—the night that you—excuse me, Dumphy, but nothing but frankness will save us now—the night that you stood listening at the door and frightened Grace with your wolfish face. Don't speak! she told me all about it! Your presence there that night gained you the information that you have used so profitably; it was your presence that fixed her wavering resolves and sent her away with me."

Both men had become very pale and earnest. Arthur moved toward the door. "I will see you to-morrow, when I will have matured some plan of defence," he said, abstractedly. "We have"—he used the plural of advocacy with a peculiar significance—"We have a clever woman to fight who may be more than our match. Meantime, remember that Ramirez is our defence; he is our man, Dumphy, hold fast to him as you would to your life. Good-day."

In another moment he was gone. As the door closed upon him a clerk entered hastily from the outer office. "You said not to disturb you, sir, and here is an important despatch waiting for you from Wingdam."

Mr. Dumphy took it mechanically, opened it, read the first line, and then said hurriedly, "Run after that man, quick!—Stop! Wait a moment. You need not go! There, that will do!"

The clerk hurriedly withdrew into the outer office. Mr. Dumphy went back to his desk again, and once more devoured the following lines:—

"Wingdam, 7th, 6 A.M.—Victor Ramirez murdered last night on Conroy's Hill. Gabriel Conroy arrested. Mrs. Conroy missing. Great excitement here; strong feeling against Gabriel. Wait instructions.—Fitch."

At first Mr. Dumphy only heard as an echo beating in his brain, the parting words of Arthur Poinsett, "Ramirez is our defence; hold fast to him as you would your life." And now he was dead—gone; their only witness; killed by Gabriel the plotter! What more was wanted to justify his worst suspicions? What should they do? He must send after Poinsett again; the plan of defence must be changed at once; to-morrow might be too late. Stop!

One of his accusers in prison charged with a capital crime! The other—the real murderer—for Dumphy made no doubt that Mrs. Conroy was responsible for the deed—a fugitive from justice! What need of any witness now? The blow that crippled these three conspirators had liberated him! For a moment Mr. Dumphy was actually conscious of a paroxysm of gratitude toward some indefinitely Supreme Being—a God of special providence—special to himself! More than this, there was that vague sentiment, common, I fear, to common humanity in such crises, that this Providence was a tacit endorsement of himself. It was the triumph of Virtue (Dumphy) over Vice (Conroy et al.).

But there would be a trial, publicity, and the possible exposure of certain things by a man whom danger might make reckless. And could he count upon Mrs. Conroy's absence or neutrality? He was conscious that her feeling for her husband was stronger than he had supposed, and she might dare everything to save him. What had a woman of that kind to do with such weakness? Why hadn't she managed it so as to kill Gabriel too? There was an evident want of practical completeness in this special Providence that, as a business man, Mr. Dumphy felt he could have regulated. And then he was seized with an idea—a damnable inspiration!—and set himself briskly to write. I regret to say that despite the popular belief in the dramatic character of all villany, Mr. Dumphy at this moment presented only the commonplace spectacle of an absorbed man of business; no lurid light gleamed from his pale blue eyes; no Satanic smile played around the corners of his smoothly shaven mouth; no feverish exclamation stirred his moist, cool lips. He wrote methodically and briskly, without deliberation or undue haste. When he had written half-a-dozen letters he folded and sealed them, and without summoning his clerk, took them himself into the outer office and thence into the large counting-room. The news of the murder had evidently got abroad; the clerks were congregated together, and the sound of eager, interested voices ceased as the great man entered and stood among them.

"Fitch, you and Judson will take the quickest route to One Horse Gulch to-night. Don't waste any time on the road or spare any expense. When you get there deliver these letters, and take your orders from my correspondents. Pick up all the details you can about this affair and let me know. What's your balance at the Gulch, Mr. Peebles? never mind the exact figures!"

"Larger than usual, sir, some heavy deposits!"

"Increase your balance then if there should be any d—d fools who connect the Bank with this matter."

"I suppose," said Mr. Fitch, respectfully, "we're to look after your foreman, Mr. Conroy, sir?"

"You are to take your orders from my correspondent, Mr. Fitch, and not to interfere in any way with public sentiment. We have nothing to do with the private acts of anybody. Justice will probably be done to Conroy. It is time that these outrages upon the reputation of the California miner should be stopped. When the fame of a whole community is prejudiced and business injured by the rowdyism of a single ruffian," said Mr. Dumphy, raising his voice slightly as he discovered the interested and absorbed presence of some of his most respectable customers, "it is time that prompt action should be taken." In fact, he would have left behind him a strong Roman flavour and a general suggestion of Brutus, had he not unfortunately effected an anti-climax by adding, "that's business, sir," as he retired to his private office.

CHAPTER IV.

MR. HAMLIN IS OFF WITH AN OLD LOVE.

Mr. Jack Hamlin did not lose much time on the road from Wingdam to Sacramento. His rapid driving, his dust bespattered vehicle, and the exhausted condition of his horse on arrival, excited but little comment from those who knew his habits, and for other criticism he had a supreme indifference. He was prudent enough, however, to leave his horse at a stable on the outskirts, and having reconstructed his toilet at a neighbouring hotel, he walked briskly toward the address given him by Maxwell. When he reached the corner of the street and was within a few paces of the massive shining door plate of Madame Eclair's Pensionnat, he stopped with a sudden ejaculation, and after a moment's hesitation, turned on his heel deliberately and began to retrace his steps.

To explain Mr. Hamlin's singular conduct I shall be obliged to disclose a secret of his, which I would fain keep from the fair reader. On receiving Olly's address from Maxwell, Mr. Hamlin had only cursorily glanced at it, and it was only on arriving before the house that he recognised to his horror that it was a boarding-school, with one of whose impulsive inmates he had whiled away his idleness a few months before in a heart-breaking but innocent flirtation, and a soul-subduing but clandestine correspondence, much to the distaste of the correct Principal. To have presented himself there in his proper person would be to have been refused admittance or subjected to a suspicion that would have kept Olly from his hands. For once, Mr. Hamlin severely regretted his infelix reputation among the sex. But he did not turn his back on his enterprise. He retraced his steps only to the main street, visited a barber's shop and a jeweller's, and reappeared on the street again with a pair of enormous green goggles and all traces of his long distinguishing silken black moustache shaven from his lip. When it is remembered that this rascal was somewhat vain of his personal appearance, the reader will appreciate his earnestness and the extent of his sacrifice.

Nevertheless, he was a little nervous as he was ushered into the formal reception-room of the Pensionnat, and waited until his credentials, countersigned by Maxwell, were submitted to Madame Eclair. Mr. Hamlin had no fear of being detected by his real name; in the brief halcyon days of his romance he had been known as Clarence Spifflington,—an ingenious combination of the sentimental and humorous which suited his fancy, and to some extent he felt expressed the character of his affection. Fate was propitious; the servant returned saying that Miss Conroy would be down in a moment, and Mr. Hamlin looked at his watch. Every moment was precious; he was beginning to get impatient when the door opened again and Olly slipped into the room.

She was a pretty child, with a peculiar boyish frankness of glance and manner, and a refinement of feature that fascinated Mr. Hamlin, who, fond as he was of all childhood, had certain masculine preferences for good looks. She seemed to be struggling with a desire to laugh when she entered, and when Jack turned towards her with extended hands she held up her own warningly, and closing the door behind her cautiously, said, in a demure whisper—

"She'll come down as soon as she can slip past Madame's door."

"Who?" asked Jack.

"Sophy."

"Who's Sophy?" asked Jack, seriously. He had never known the name of his Dulcinea. In the dim epistolatory region of sentiment she had existed only as "The Blue Moselle," so called from the cerulean hue of her favourite raiment, and occasionally, in moments of familiar endearment, as "Mosey."

"Come, now, pretend you don't know, will you?" said Olly, evading the kiss which Jack always had ready for childhood. "If I was her, I wouldn't have anything to say to you after that!" she added, with that ostentatious chivalry of the sex towards each other, in the presence of their common enemy. "Why, she saw you from the window when you first came this morning, when you went back again and shaved off your moustache; she knew you. And you don't know her! It's mean, ain't it?—they'll grow again, won't they?"—Miss Olly referred to the mustachios and not the affections!

Jack was astonished and alarmed. In his anxiety to evade or placate the duenna, he had never thought of her charge—his sweetheart. Here was a dilemma! "Oh yes!" said Jack hastily, with a well simulated expression of arch affection, "Sophy—of course—that's my little game! But I've got a note for you too, my dear," and he handed Olly the few lines that Gabriel had hastily scrawled. He watched her keenly, almost breathlessly, as she read them. To his utter bewilderment she laid the note down indifferently and said, "That's like Gabe—the old simpleton!"

"But you're goin' to do what he says," asked Mr. Hamlin, "ain't you?"

"No," said Olly, promptly, "I ain't! Why, Lord! Mr. Hamlin, you don't know that man; why, he does this sort o' thing every week!" Perceiving Jack stare, she went on, "Why, only last week, didn't he send to me to meet him out on the corner of the street, and he my own brother, instead o' comin' here, ez he hez a right to do. Go to him at Wingdam? No! ketch me!"

"But suppose he can't come," continued Mr. Hamlin.

"Why can't he come? I tell you, it's just foolishness and the meanest kind o' bashfulness. Jes because there happened to be a young lady here from San Francisco, Rosey Ringround, who was a little took with the old fool. If he could come to Wingdam, why couldn't he come here,—that's what I want to know?"

"Will you let me see that note?" asked Hamlin.

Olly handed him the note, with the remark, "He don't spell well—and he won't let me teach him—the old Muggins!"

Hamlin took it and read as follows:—

"Dear Olly,—If it don't run a fowl uv yer lessings and the Maddam's willin' and the young laddies, Brother Gab's waitin' fer ye at Wingdam, so no more from your affeshtunate brother, Gab."

Mr. Hamlin was in a quandary. It never had been part of his plan to let Olly know the importance of her journey. Mr. Maxwell's injunctions to bring her "quietly," his own fears of an outburst that might bring a questioning and sympathetic school about his ears, and lastly, and not the least potently, his own desire to enjoy Olly's company in the long ride to One Horse Gulch without the preoccupation of grief, with his own comfortable conviction that he could eventually bring Gabriel out of this "fix" without Olly knowing anything about it, all this forbade his telling her the truth. But here was a coil he had not thought of. Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin was quick at expedients.

"Then you think Sophy can see me," he added, with a sudden interest.

"Of course she will!" said Olly, archly. "It was right smart in you to get acquainted with Gabe and set him up to writing that, though it's just like him. He's that soft that anybody could get round him. But there she is now, Mr. Hamlin; that's her step on the stairs. And I don't suppose you two hez any need of me now."

And she slipped out of the room, as demurely as she had entered, at the same moment that a tall, slim, and somewhat sensational young lady in blue came flying in.

I can, in justice to Mr. Hamlin, whose secrets have been perhaps needlessly violated in the progress of this story, do no less than pass over as sacred, and perhaps wholly irrelevant to the issue, the interview that took place between himself and Miss Sophy. That he succeeded in convincing that young woman of his unaltered loyalty, that he explained his long silence as the result of a torturing doubt of the permanence of her own affection, that his presence at that moment was the successful culmination of a long-matured and desperate plan to see her once more and learn the truth from her own lips, I am sure that no member of my own disgraceful sex will question, and I trust no member of a too fond and confiding sex will doubt. That some bitterness was felt by Mr. Hamlin, who was conscious of certain irregularities during this long interval, and some tears shed by Miss Sophy, who was equally conscious of more or less aberration of her own magnetic instincts during his absence, I think will be self-evident to the largely comprehending reader. Howbeit, at the end of ten tender yet tranquillising minutes Mr. Hamlin remarked, in low thrilling tones—

"By the aid of a few confiding friends, and playin' it rather low on them, I got that note to the Conroy girl, but the game's up, and we might as well pass in our checks now, if she goes back on us, and passes out, which I reckon's her little game. If what you say is true, Sophy, and you do sometimes look back to the past, and things is generally on the square, you'll go for that Olly and fetch her, for if I go back without that child, and throw up my hand, it's just tampering with the holiest affections and playing it mighty rough on as white a man as ever you saw, Sophy, to say nothing of your reputation, and everybody ready to buck agin us who has ten cents to chip in on. You must make her go back with me and put things on a specie basis."

In spite of the mixed character of Mr. Hamlin's metaphor, his eloquence was so convincing and effective that Miss Sophy at once proceeded with considerable indignation to insist upon Olly's withdrawing her refusal.

"If this is the way you are going to act, you horrid little thing! after all that me and him's trusted you, I'd like to see the girl in school that will ever tell you anything again, that's all!" a threat so appalling that Olly, who did not stop to consider that this confidence was very recent and had been forced upon her, assented without further delay, exhibited Gabriel's letter to Madame Eclair, and having received that lady's gracious permission to visit her brother, was in half an hour in company with Mr. Hamlin on the road.

CHAPTER V.

THE THREE VOICES.

Once free from the trammelling fascinations of Sophy and the more dangerous espionage of Madame Eclair, and with the object of his mission accomplished, Mr. Hamlin recovered his natural spirits, and became so hilarious that Olly, who attributed this exaltation to his interview with Sophy, felt constrained to make some disparaging remarks about that young lady, partly by way of getting even with her for her recent interference, and partly in obedience to some well known but unexplained law of the sex. To her great surprise, however, Mr. Hamlin's spirits were in no way damped, nor did he make any attempt to defend his Lalage. Nevertheless, he listened attentively, and when she had concluded he looked suddenly down upon her chip hat and thick yellow tresses, and said—

"Ever been in the Southern country, Olly?"

"No," returned the child.

"Never down about San Antonio, visiting friends or relations?"

"No," said Olly, decidedly.

Mr. Hamlin was silent for some time, giving his exclusive attention to his horse, who was evincing a disposition to "break" into a gallop. When he had brought the animal back into a trot again he continued—

"There's a woman! Olly."

"Down in San Antonio?" asked Olly.

Mr. Hamlin nodded.

"Purty?" continued the child.

"It ain't the word," responded Mr. Hamlin, seriously. "Purty ain't the word."

"As purty as Sophy?" continued Olly, a little mischievously.

"Sophy be hanged!" Mr. Hamlin here quickly pulled up himself and horse, both being inclined to an exuberance startling to the youth and sex of the third party. "That is—I mean something in a different suit entirely."

Here he again hesitated, doubtful of his slang.

"I see," quoth Olly; "diamonds—Sophy's in spades."

The gambler (in sudden and awful admiration), "Diamonds—you've just struck it! but what do you know 'bout cards?"

Olly, pomposamÉnte, "Everything! Tell our fortunes by 'em—we girls! I'm in hearts—Sophy's in spades—you're in clubs! Do you know," in a thrilling whisper, "only last night I had a letter, a journey, a death, and a gentleman in clubs, dark complected—that's you."

Mr. Hamlin—a good deal more at ease through this revelation of the universal power of the four suits—"Speakin' of women, I suppose down there (indicating the school) you occasionally hear of angels. What's their general complexion?"

Olly, dubiously, "In the pictures?"

Hamlin, "Yes;" with a leading question, "sorter dark complected sometimes, hey?"

Olly, positively, "Never! always white."

Jack, "Always white?"

Olly, "Yes, and flabby!"

They rode along for some time silently. Presently Mr. Hamlin broke into a song, a popular song, one verse of which Olly supplied with such deftness of execution and melodiousness of pipe that Mr. Hamlin instantly suggested a duet, and so over the dead and barren wastes of the Sacramento plains they fell to singing, often barbarously, sometimes melodiously, but never self-consciously, wherein, I take it, they approximated to the birds and better class of poets, so that rough teamsters, rude packers, and weary wayfarers were often touched, as with the birds and poets aforesaid, to admiration and tenderness; and when they stopped for supper at a wayside station, and Jack Hamlin displayed that readiness of resource, audacity of manner and address, and perfect and natural obliviousness to the criticism of propriety or the limitations of precedent, and when, moreover, the results of all this was a much better supper than perhaps a more reputable companion could have procured, she thought she had never known a more engaging person than this Knave of Clubs.

When they were fairly on the road again, Olly began to exhibit some curiosity regarding her brother, and asked some few questions about Gabriel's family, which disclosed the fact that Jack's acquaintance with Gabriel was comparatively recent.

"Then you never saw July at all?" asked Olly.

"July," queried Jack, reflectively; "what's she like?"

"I don't know whether she's a heart or a spade," said Olly, as thoughtfully.

Jack was silent for some moments, and then after a pause, to Olly's intense astonishment, proceeded to sketch, in a few vigorous phrases, the external characteristics of Mrs. Conroy.

"Why, you said you never saw her!" ejaculated Olly.

"No more I did," responded the gambler, with a quick laugh; "this is only a little bluff."

It had grown cold with the brief twilight and the coming on of night. For some time the black, unchanging outlines of the distant Coast Range were sharply silhouetted against a pale, ashen sky, that at last faded utterly, leaving a few stars behind as emblems of the burnt-out sunset. The red road presently lost its calm and even outline in the swiftly gathering shadows, or to Olly's fancy was stopped by shapeless masses of rock or giant-like trunks of trees that in turn seemed to give way before the skilful hand and persistent will of her driver. At times a chill exhalation from a roadside ditch came to Olly like the damp breath of an open grave, and the child shivered even beneath the thick travelling shawl of Mr. Hamlin, with which she was enwrapped. Whereat Jack at once produced a flask and prevailed upon Olly to drink something that set her coughing, but which that astute and experienced child at once recognised as whisky. Mr. Hamlin, to her surprise, however, did not himself partake, a fact which she at once pointed out to him.

"At an early age, Olly," said Mr. Hamlin, with infinite gravity, "I promised an infirm and aged relative never to indulge in spirituous liquors, except on a physician's prescription. I carry this flask subject to the doctor's orders. Never having ordered me to drink any, I don't."

As it was too dark for the child to observe Mr. Hamlin's eyes, which, after the fashion of her sex, she consulted much oftener than his speech for his real meaning, and was as often deceived, she said nothing, and Mr. Hamlin relapsed into silence. At the end of five minutes he said—

"She was a woman, Olly—you bet!"

Olly, with great tact and discernment, instantly referring back to Mr. Hamlin's discourse of an hour before, queried, "That girl in the Southern country?"

"Yes," said Mr. Hamlin.

"Tell me all about her," said Olly—"all you know."

"That ain't much," mused Hamlin, with a slight sigh. "Ah, Olly, she could sing!"

"With the piano?" said Olly, a little superciliously.

"With the organ," said Hamlin.

Olly, whose sole idea of this instrument was of the itinerant barrel variety, yawned slightly, and with a very perceptible lack of interest said that she hoped she would see her some time when she came up that way and was "going 'round."

Mr. Hamlin did not laugh, but after a few minutes' rapid driving, began to explain to Olly with great earnestness the character of a church organ.

"I used to play once, Olly, in a church. They did say that I used sometimes to fetch that congregation, jest snatch 'em bald-headed, Olly, but it's a long time ago! There was one hymn in particular that I used to run on consid'rable—one o' them Masses o' Mozart—one that I heard her sing, Olly; it went something like this;" and Jack proceeded to lift his voice in the praise of Our Lady of Sorrows, with a serene unconsciousness to his surroundings, and utter absorption in his theme that would have become the most enthusiastic acolyte. The springs creaked, the wheels rattled, the mare broke, plunged, and recovered herself, the slight vehicle swayed from side to side, Olly's hat bruised and flattened itself against his shoulder, and still Mr. Hamlin sang. When he had finished he looked down at Olly. She was asleep!

Jack was an artist and an enthusiast, but not unreasonable nor unforgiving. "It's the whisky," he murmured to himself, in an apologetic recitation to the air he had just been singing. He changed the reins to his other hand with infinite caution and gentleness, slowly passed his disengaged arm round the swaying little figure, until he had drawn the chip hat and the golden tresses down upon his breast and shoulder. In this attitude, scarcely moving a muscle lest he should waken the sleeping child, at midnight he came upon the twinkling lights of Fiddletown. Here he procured a fresh horse, dispensing with an ostler and harnessing the animal himself, with such noiseless skill and quickness that Olly, propped up in the buggy with pillows and blankets borrowed from the Fiddletown hostelry, slept through it all, nor wakened even after they were again upon the road, and had begun the long ascent of the Wingdam turnpike.

It wanted but an hour of daybreak when he reached the summit, and even then he only slackened his pace when his wheels sank to their hubs in the beaten dust of the stage road. The darkness of that early hour was intensified by the gloom of the heavy pine woods through which the red road threaded its difficult and devious way. It was very still. Hamlin could hardly hear the dead, muffled plunge of his own horse in the dusty track before him, and yet once or twice he stopped to listen. His quick ear detected the sound of voices and the jingle of Mexican spurs, apparently approaching behind him. Mr. Hamlin knew that he had not passed any horseman and was for a moment puzzled. But then he recalled the fact that a few hundred yards beyond, the road was intersected by the "cut-off" to One Horse Gulch, which, after running parallel with the Wingdam turnpike for half a mile, crossed it in the forest. The voices were on that road going the same way. Mr. Hamlin pushed on his horse to the crossing, and hidden by the darkness and the trunks of the giant pines, pulled up to let the strangers precede him. In a few moments the voices were abreast of him and stationary. The horsemen had apparently halted.

"Here seems to be a road," said a voice quite audibly.

"All right, then," returned another, "it's the 'cut-off. We'll save an hour, sure."

A third voice here struck in potentially, "Keep the stage road. If Joe Hall gets wind of what's up, he'll run his man down to Sacramento for safe keeping. If he does he'll take this road—it's the only one—sabe?—we can't miss him!"

Jack Hamlin leaned forward breathlessly in his seat.

"But it's an hour longer this way," growled the second voice. "The boys will wait," responded the previous speaker. There was a laugh, a jingling of spurs, and the invisible procession moved slowly forward in the darkness.

Mr. Hamlin did not stir a muscle until the voices failed before him in the distance. Then he cast a quick glance at the child; she still slept quietly, undisturbed by the halt or those ominous voices which had brought so sudden a colour into her companion's cheek and so baleful a light in his dark eyes. Yet for a moment Mr. Hamlin hesitated. To go forward to Wingdam now would necessitate his following cautiously in the rear of the Lynchers, and so prevent his giving a timely alarm. To strike across to One Horse Gulch by the "cut-off" would lose him the chance of meeting the Sheriff and his prisoner, had they been forewarned and were escaping in time. But for the impediment of the unconscious little figure beside him, he would have risked a dash through the party ahead of him. But that was not to be thought of now. He must follow them to Wingdam, leave the child, and trust to luck to reach One Horse Gulch before them. If they delayed a moment at Wingdam it could be done. A feeling of yearning tenderness and pity succeeded the slight impatience with which he had a moment before regarded his encumbering charge. He held her in his arms, scarcely daring to breathe lest he should waken her—hoping that she might sleep until they reached Wingdam, and that leaving her with his faithful henchman "Pete," he might get away before she was aroused to embarrassing inquiry. Mr. Hamlin had a man's dread of scenes with even so small a specimen of the sex, and for once in his life he felt doubtful of his own readiness, and feared lest in his excitement he might reveal the imminent danger of her brother. Perhaps he was never before so conscious of that danger; perhaps he was never before so interested in the life of any one. He began to see things with Olly's eyes—to look upon events with reference to her feelings rather than his own; if she had sobbed and cried this sympathetic rascal really believed that he would have cried too. Such was the unconscious and sincere flattery of admiration. He was relieved, when with the first streaks of dawn, his mare wearily clattered over the scattered river pebbles and "tailings" that paved the outskirts of Wingdam. He was still more relieved when the Three Voices of the Night, now faintly visible as three armed horsemen, drew up before the verandah of the Wingdam Hotel, dismounted, and passed into the bar-room. And he was perfectly content, when a moment later he lifted the still sleeping Olly in his arms and bore her swiftly yet cautiously to his room. To awaken the sleeping Pete on the floor above, and drag him half-dressed and bewildered into the presence of the unconscious child, as she lay on Jack Hamlin's own bed, half buried in a heap of shawls and rugs, was only the work of another moment.

"Why, Mars Jack! Bress de Lord—it's a chile!" said Pete, recoiling in sacred awe and astonishment.

"Hold your jaw!" said Jack, in a fierce whisper, "you'll waken her! Listen to me, you chattering idiot. Don't waken her, if you want to keep the bones in your creaking old skeleton whole enough for the doctors to buy. Let her sleep as long as she can. If she wakes up and asks after me, tell her I'm gone for her brother. Do you hear? Give her anything she asks for—except—the truth! What are you doing, you old fool?"

Pete was carefully removing the mountain of shawls and blankets that Jack had piled upon Olly. "'Fore God, Mars Jack—you's smuddering dat chile!" was his only response. Nevertheless Jack was satisfied with a certain vague tenderness in his manipulation, and said curtly, "Get me a horse!"

"It ain't to be did, Mars Jack; de stables is all gone—cleaned! Dey's a rush over to One Horse Gulch, all day!"

"There are three horses at the door," said Jack, with wicked significance.

"For de love of God, Mars Jack, don't ye do dat!" ejaculated Pete, in unfeigned and tremulous alarm. "Dey don't take dem kind o' jokes yer worth a cent—dey'd be doin' somefin' awful to ye, sah—shuah's yer born!"

But Jack, with the child lying there peaceably in his own bed, and the Three Voices growing husky in the bar-room below, regained all his old audacity. "I haven't made up my mind," continued Jack, coolly, "which of the three I'll take, but you'll find out from the owner when I do! Tell him that Mr. Jack Hamlin left his compliments and a mare and buggy for him. You can say that if he keeps the mare from breaking and gives her her head down hill, she can do her mile inside of 2.45. Hush! not a word! Bye-bye." He turned, lifted the shawl from the fresh cheek of the sleeping Olly, kissed her, and shaking his fist at Pete, vanished.

For a few moments the negro listened breathlessly. And then there came the sharp, quick clatter of hoofs from the rocky road below, and he sank dejectedly at the foot of the bed. "He's gone—done it! Lord save us! but it's a hangin' matter yer!" And even as he spoke Mr. Jack Hamlin, mounted on the fleet mustang that had been ridden by the Potential Voice, with his audacious face against the red sunrise and his right shoulder squarely advanced, was butting away the morning mists that rolled slowly along the river road to One Horse Gulch.

CHAPTER VI.

MR. DUMPHY IS PERPLEXED BY A MOVEMENT IN REAL ESTATE.

Mr. Dumphy's confidence in himself was so greatly restored that several business enterprises of great pith and moment, whose currents for the past few days had been turned awry, and so "lost the name of action," were taken up by him with great vigour and corresponding joy to the humbler business associates who had asked him just to lend his name to that project, and make "a big thing of it." He had just given his royal sanction and a cheque to an Association for the Encouragement of Immigration, by the distribution through the sister States of one million seductive pamphlets, setting forth the various resources and advantages of California for the farmer, and proving that one hundred and fifty dollars spent for a passage thither was equal to the price of a farm; he had also assisted in sending the eloquent Mr. Blowhard and the persuasive Mr. Windygust to present these facts orally to the benighted dwellers of the East, and had secured the services of two eminent Californian statisticians to demonstrate the fact, that more people were killed by lightning and frozen to death in the streets of New York in a single year than were ever killed by railroad accidents or human violence in California during the past three centuries; he had that day conceived the "truly magnificent plan" of bringing the waters of Lake Tahoe to San Francisco by ditches, thereby enabling the citizens to keep the turf in their door-yards green through the summer. He had started two banks, a stage line, and a watering place, whose climate and springs were declared healthful by edict, and were aggressively advertised; and he had just projected a small suburban town that should bear his name. He had returned from this place in high spirits with a company of friends in the morning after this interview with Poinsett. There was certainly no trace of the depression of that day in his manner.

It was a foggy morning, following a clear, still night—an atmospheric condition not unusual at that season of the year to attract Mr. Dumphy's attention, yet he was conscious on reaching his office of an undue oppressiveness in the air that indisposed him to exertion, and caused him to remove his coat and cravat. Then he fell to work upon his morning's mail, and speedily forgot the weather. There was a letter from Mrs. Sepulvida, disclosing the fact that, owing to the sudden and unaccountable drying up of the springs on the lower plains, large numbers of her cattle had died of thirst and were still perishing. This was of serious import to Mr. Dumphy, who had advanced money on this perishable stock, and he instantly made a memorandum to check this sudden freak of Nature, which he at once attributed to feminine carelessness of management. Further on Mrs. Sepulvida inquired particularly as to the condition of the Conroy mine, and displayed a disposition characteristic of her sex, to realise at once on her investment. Her letter ended thus: "But I shall probably see you in San Francisco. Pepe says that this morning the markings on the beach showed the rise of a tide or wave during the night higher than any ever known since one thousand eight hundred. I do not feel safe so near the beach, and shall rebuild in the spring." Mr. Dumphy smiled grimly to himself. He had at one time envied Poinsett. But here was the woman he was engaged to marry, careless, improvident, with a vast estate, and on the eve of financial disaster through her carelessness, and yet actually about to take a journey of two hundred miles because of some foolish, womanish whim or superstition. It would be a fine thing if this man, to whom good fortune fell without any effort on his part—this easy, elegant supercilious Arthur Poinsett, who was even indifferent to that good fortune, should find himself tricked and deceived! should have to apply to him, Dumphy, for advice and assistance! And this, too, after his own advice and assistance regarding the claims of Colonel Starbottle's client had been futile. The revenge would be complete. Mr. Dumphy rubbed his hands in prospective satisfaction.

When, a few moments later, Colonel Starbottle's card was put into his hand Mr. Dumphy's satisfaction was complete. This was the day that the gallant Colonel was to call for an answer; it was evident that Arthur had not seen him, nor had he made the discovery of Starbottle's unknown client. The opportunity of vanquishing this man without the aid or even knowledge of Poinsett was now before him. By way of preparing himself for the encounter, as well as punishing the Colonel, he purposely delayed the interview, and for full five minutes kept his visitor cooling his heels in the outer office.

He was seated at his desk, ostentatiously preoccupied, when Colonel Starbottle was at last admitted. He did not raise his head when the door opened, nor in fact until the Colonel, stepping lightly forward, walked to Dumphy's side, and deliberately unhooking his cane from its accustomed rest on his arm, laid it, pronouncedly, on the desk before him. The Colonel's face was empurpled, the Colonel's chest was efflorescent and bursting, the Colonel had the general effect of being about to boil over the top button of his coat, but his manner was jauntily and daintily precise.

"One moment!—a single moment, sir!" he said, with husky politeness. "Before proceeding to business—er—we will devote a single moment to the necessary explanations of—er—er—a gentleman. The kyard now lying before you, sir, was handed ten minutes ago to one of your subordinates. I wish to inquire, sir, if it was then delivered to you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Dumphy, impatiently.

Colonel Starbottle leaned over Mr. Dumphy's desk and coolly rung his bell. Mr. Dumphy's clerk instantly appeared at the door. "I wish—" said the Colonel, addressing himself to the astounded employÉ as he stood loftily over Mr. Dumphy's chair—"I have—er—in fact sent for you, to withdraw the offensive epithets I addressed to you, and the threats—of er—of er—personal violence! The offence—is not, yours—but—er—rests with your employer, for whose apology I am—er—now waiting. Nevertheless I am ready, sir, to hold myself at your service—that is—er—of course—after my responsibility—er—with your master—er—ceases!"

Mr. Dumphy, who in the presence of Colonel Starbottle felt his former awkwardness return, signed with a forced smile to his embarrassed clerk to withdraw, and said hastily, but with an assumption of easy familiarity, "Sorry, Colonel, sorry, but I was very busy, and am now. No offence. All a mistake, you know! business man and business hours," and Mr. Dumphy leaned back in his chair, and emitted his rare cachinnatory bark.

"Glad to hear it, sir, I accept your apology," said the Colonel, recovering his good humour and his profanity together, "hang me, if I didn't think it was another affair like that I had with old Maje Tolliver, of Georgia. Called on him in Washington in '48 during session. Boy took up my kyard. Waited ten minutes, no reply! Then sent friend, poor Jeff Boomerang, dead now, killed in New Orleans by Ben Pastor—with challenge. Hang me, sir, after the second shot, Maje sends for me, lying thar with hole in both lungs, gasping for breath. 'It's all a blunder, Star,' he says, 'boy never brought kyard. Horsewhip the nigger for me, Star, for I reckon I won't live to do it,' and died like a gentleman, blank me!"

"What have you got to propose?" said Mr. Dumphy, hastily, seeing an opportunity to stop the flow of the Colonel's recollections.

"According to my memory, at our last interview over the social glass in your own house, I think something was said of a proposition coming from you. That is—er," continued the Colonel, loftily, "I hold myself responsible for the mistake, if any."

It had been Mr. Dumphy's first intention to assume the roughly offensive; to curtly inform Colonel Starbottle of the flight of his confederate, and dare him to do his worst. But for certain vague reasons he changed his plan of tactics. He drew his chair closer to the Colonel, and clapping his hand familiarly on his shoulder, began—

"You're a man of the world, Starbottle, so am I. Sabe? You're a gentleman—so am I," he continued, hastily. "But I'm a business man, and you're not. Sabe? Let's understand each other. No offence, you know, but in the way of business. This woman, claiming to be my wife, don't exist—it's all right, you know, I understand. I don't blame you, but you've been deceived, and all that sort of thing. I've got the proofs. Now as a man of the world and a gentleman and a business man, when I say the game's up! you'll understand me. Look at that—there!" He thrust into Starbottle's hand the telegram of the preceding day, "There! the man's hung by this time—lynched! The woman's gone!"

Colonel Starbottle read the telegram without any perceptible dismay or astonishment.

"Conroy! Conroy!—don't know the man. There was a McConroy, of St. Jo, but I don't think it's the same. No, sir! This ain't like him, sir! Don't seem to be a duel, unless he'd posted the man to kill on sight—murder's an ugly word to use to gentlemen. D—n me, sir, I don't know but he could hold the man responsible who sent that despatch. It's offensive, sir—very!"

"And you don't know Mrs. Conroy?" continued Mr. Dumphy, fixing his eyes on Colonel Starbottle's face.

"Mrs. Conroy! The wife of the superintendent—one of the most beautiful women! Good Ged, sir, I do! And I'm dev'lish sorry for her. But what's this got to do with our affair? Oh! I see, Ged!"—the Colonel suddenly chuckled, drew out his handkerchief, and waved it in the air with deprecatory gallantry, "gossip, sir, all gossip. People will talk! A fine woman! Blank me, if she was inclined to show some attention to Colonel Starbottle—Ged, sir, it was no more than other women have. You comprehend, Dumphy? Ged, sir, so the story's got round, eh?—husband's jealous—killed wrong man! Folks think she's run off with Colonel Starbottle, ha! ha! No, sir," he continued, suddenly dropping into an attitude of dignified severity. "You can say that Colonel Starbottle branded the story as a lie, sir! That whatever might have been the foolish indiscretion of a susceptible sex, Colonel Starbottle will defend the reputation of that lady, sir, with his life—with his life!"

Absurd and ridiculous as this sudden diversion of Colonel Starbottle from the point at issue had become, Dumphy could not doubt his sincerity, nor the now self-evident fact that Mrs. Conroy was not his visitor's mysterious client! Mr. Dumphy felt that his suddenly built up theory was demolished and his hope with it. He was still at the mercy of this conceited braggart and the invisible power behind him—whoever or whatever it might be. Mr. Dumphy was not inclined to superstition, but he began to experience a strange awe of his unknown persecutor, and resolved at any risk to discover who it was. Could it be really his wife?—had not the supercilious Poinsett been himself tricked—or was he not now trying to trick him, Dumphy? Couldn't Starbottle be bribed to expose at least the name of his client? He would try it.

"I said just now you had been deceived in this woman who represents herself to be my wife. I find I have been mistaken in the person, who I believe imposed upon you, and it is possible that I may be otherwise wrong. My wife may be alive. I am willing to admit it. Bring her here to-morrow and I will accept it as a fact."

"You forget that she refuses to see you again," said Colonel Starbottle, "until she has established her claim by process of law."

"That's so! that's all right, old fellow; we understand each other. Now, suppose that we business men—as a business maxim, you know—always prefer to deal with principals. Now suppose we even go so far as to do that and yet pay an agent's commission, perhaps—you understand me—even a bonus. Good! That's business! You understand that as a gentleman and a man of the world. Now, I say, bring me your principal—fetch along that woman, and I'll make it all right with you. Stop! I know what you're going to say; you're bound by honour and all that—I understand your position as a gentleman, and respect it. Then let me know where I can find her! Understand—you sha'n't be compromised as bringing about the interview in any way. I'll see that you're protected in your commissions from your client; and for my part—if a cheque for five thousand dollars will satisfy you of my desire to do the right thing in this matter, it's at your service."

The Colonel rose to his feet and applied himself apparently to the single and silent inflation of his chest, for the space of a minute. When the upper buttons of his coat seemed to be on the point of flying off with a report, he suddenly extended his hand and grasped Dumphy's with fervour. "Permit me," he said, in a voice husky with emotion, "to congratulate myself on dealing with a gentleman and a man of honour. Your sentiments, sir, I don't care if I do say it, do you credit! I am proud, sir," continued the Colonel, warmly, "to have made your acquaintance! But I regret to say, sir, that I cannot give you the information you require. I do not myself know the name or address of my client."

The look of half-contemptuous satisfaction which had irradiated Dumphy's face at the beginning of this speech, changed to one of angry suspicion at its close. "That's a d——d queer oversight of yours," he ejaculated, with an expression as nearly insulting as he dared to make it. Colonel Starbottle did not apparently notice the manner of his speech, but drawing his chair close beside Dumphy, he laid his hand upon his arm.

"Your confidence as a man of honour and a gentleman," he began, "demands equal confidence and frankness on my part, and Culp. Starbottle of Virginia is not the, man to withhold it! When I state that I do not know the name and address of my client, I believe, sir, there is no one now living, who will—er—er—require or—er—deem it necessary for me to repeat the assertion! Certainly not, sir," added the Colonel, lightly waving his hand, "the gentleman who has just honoured me with his confidence and invited mine—I thank you, sir," he continued, as Mr. Dumphy made a hasty motion of assent, "and will go on."

"It is not necessary for me to name the party who first put me in possession of the facts. You will take my word as a gentleman—er—that it is some one unknown to you, of unimportant position, though of strict respectability, and one who acted only as the agent of my real client. When the case was handed over to me there was also put into my possession a sealed envelope containing the name of my client and principal witness. My injunctions were not to open it until all negotiations had failed and it was necessary to institute legal proceedings. That envelope I have here. You perceive it is unopened!"

Mr. Dumphy unconsciously reached out his hand. With a gesture of polite deprecation Colonel Starbottle evaded it, and placing the letter on the table before him, continued, "It is unnecessary to say that—er—there being in my judgment no immediate necessity for the beginning of a suit—the injunctions still restrain me, and I shall not open the letter. If, however, I accidentally mislay it on this table and it is returned to me to-morrow, sealed as before, I believe, sir, as a gentleman and a man of honour I violate no pledge."

"I see," said Mr. Dumphy, with a short laugh.

"Excuse me, if I venture to require another condition, merely as a form among men of honour. Write as I dictate." Mr. Dumphy took up a pen. Colonel Starbottle placed one hand on his honourable breast and began slowly and meditatively to pace the length of the room with the air of a second measuring the distance for his principal. "Are you ready?"

"Go on," said Dumphy, impatiently.

"I hereby pledge myself—er—er—that in the event of any disclosure by me—er—of confidential communications from Colonel Starbottle to me, I shall hold myself ready to afford him the usual honourable satisfaction—er—common among gentlemen, at such times or places, and with such weapons as he may choose, without further formality of challenge, and that—er—er—failing in that I do thereby proclaim myself, without posting, a liar, poltroon, and dastard."

In the full pre-occupation of his dignified composition, and possibly from an inability to look down over the increased exaggeration of his swelling breast, Colonel Starbottle did not observe the contemptuous smile which curled the lip of his amanuensis. Howbeit Mr. Dumphy signed the document and handed it to him. Colonel Starbottle put it in his pocket. Nevertheless he lingered by Mr. Dumphy's side.

"The—er—er—cheque," said the Colonel, with a slight cough, "had better be to your order, endorsed by you—to spare any criticism hereafter."

Mr. Dumphy hesitated a moment. He would have preferred as a matter of business to have first known the contents of the envelope, but with a slight smile he dashed off the cheque and handed it to the Colonel. "If—er—it would not be too much trouble," said the Colonel, jauntily, "for the same reason just mentioned, would you give that—er—piece of paper to one of your clerks to draw the money for me?"

Mr. Dumphy impatiently, with his eyes on the envelope, rang his bell and handed the cheque to the clerk, while Colonel Starbottle, with an air of abstraction, walked discreetly to the window.

For the rest of Colonel Starbottle's life he never ceased to deplore this last act of caution, and regret that he had not put the cheque in his pocket. For as he walked to the window the floor suddenly appeared to rise beneath his feet and as suddenly sank again, and he was thrown violently against the mantelpiece. He felt sick and giddy. With a terrible apprehension of apoplexy in his whirling brain, he turned toward his companion, who had risen from his seat and was supporting himself by his swinging desk with a panic-stricken face and a pallor equal to his own. In another moment a bookcase toppled with a crash to the floor, a loud outcry arose from the outer offices, and amidst the sounds of rushing feet, the breaking of glass, and the creaking of timber, the two men dashed with a common instinct to the door. It opened two inches and remained fixed. With the howl of a caged wild beast Dumphy threw himself against the rattling glass of the window that opened on the level of the street. In another instant Colonel Starbottle was beside him on the side-walk, and the next they were separated, unconsciously, uncaringly, as if they had been the merest strangers in contact in a crowd. The business that had brought them together, the unfinished, incomplete, absorbing interests of a moment ago were forgotten—were buried in the oblivion of another existence, which had no sympathy with this, whose only instinct was to fly—where, they knew not!

The middle of the broad street was filled with a crowd of breathless, pallid, death-stricken men who had lost all sense but the common instinct of animals. There were hysterical men, who laughed loudly without a cause, and talked incessantly of what they knew not. There were dumb, paralysed men, who stood helplessly and hopelessly beneath cornices and chimneys that toppled over and crushed them. There were automatic men, who flying, carried with them the work on which they were engaged—one whose hands were full of bills and papers, another who held his ledger under his arm. There were men who had forgotten the ordinary instincts of decency—some half-dressed. There were men who rushed from the fear of death into its presence; two were picked up, one who had jumped through a skylight, another who had blindly leaped from a fourth-story window. There were brave men who trembled like children; there was one whose life had been spent in scenes of daring and danger, who cowered paralysed in the corner of the room from which a few inches of plastering had fallen. There were hopeful men who believed that the danger was over, and having passed, would, by some mysterious law, never recur; there were others who shook their heads and said that the next shock would be fatal. There were crowds around the dust that arose from fallen chimneys and cornices, around runaway horses that had dashed as madly as their drivers against lamp-posts, around telegraph and newspaper offices eager to know the extent of the disaster. Along the remoter avenues and cross-streets dwellings were deserted, people sat upon their doorsteps or in chairs upon the sidewalks, fearful of the houses they had built with their own hands, and doubtful even of this blue arch above them that smiled so deceitfully; of those far-reaching fields beyond, which they had cut into lots and bartered and sold, and which now seemed to suddenly rise against them, or slip and wither away from their very feet. It seemed so outrageous that this dull, patient earth, whose homeliness they had adorned and improved, and which, whatever their other fortune or vicissitudes, at least had been their sure inheritance, should have become so faithless. Small wonder that the owner of a little house, which had sunk on the reclaimed water front, stooped in the speechless and solemn absurdity of his wrath to shake his clenched fist in the face of the Great Mother.

The real damage to life and property had been so slight and in such pronounced contrast to the prevailing terror, that half an hour later only a sense of the ludicrous remained with the greater masses of the people. Mr. Dumphy, like all practical, unimaginative men, was among the first to recover his presence of mind with the passing of the immediate danger. People took confidence when this great man, who had so much to lose, after sharply remanding his clerks and everybody else back to business, re-entered his office. He strode at once to his desk. But the envelope was gone! He looked hurriedly among his papers—on the floor—by the broken window—but in vain.

Mr. Dumphy instantly rang his bell. The clerk appeared.

"Was that draft paid?"

"No, sir; we were counting the money when"——

"Stop it!—return the draft to me."

The young man was confiding to his confrÈres his suspicions of a probable "run" on the bank as indicated by Mr. Dumphy's caution, when he was again summoned by Mr. Dumphy.

"Go to Mr. Poinsett's office and ask him to come here at once."

In a few moments the clerk returned out of breath.

"Mr. Poinsett left a quarter of an hour ago, sir, for San Antonio."

"San Antonio?"

"Yes, sir—they say there's bad news from the Mission."

CHAPTER VII.

IN WHICH BOTH JUSTICE AND THE HEAVENS FALL.

The day following the discovery of the murder of Victor Ramirez was one of the intensest excitement in One Horse Gulch. It was not that killing was rare in that pastoral community—foul murder had been done there upon the bodies of various citizens of more or less respectability, and the victim in the present instance was a stranger and a man who awakened no personal sympathy; but the suspicion that swiftly and instantly attached to two such important people as Mr. and Mrs. Conroy, already objects of severe criticism, was sufficient to exalt this particular crime above all others in thrilling interest. For two days business was practically suspended.

The discovery of the murder was made by Sal, who stumbled upon the body of the unfortunate Victor early the next morning during a walk on Conroy's Hill, manifestly in search of the missing man, who had not returned to the hotel that night. A few flippant souls, misunderstanding Miss Clark's interest in the stranger, asserted that he had committed suicide to escape her attentions, but all jocular hypothesis ceased when it became known that Gabriel and his wife had fled. Then came the report that Gabriel had been seen by a passing miner early in the day "shoving" the stranger along the trail, with his hand on his collar, and exchanging severe words. Then the willing testimony of Miss Clark that she had seen Mrs. Conroy in secret converse with Victor before the murder; then the unwilling evidence of the Chinaman who had overtaken Gabriel with the letter, but who heard the sounds of quarrelling and cries for help in the bushes after his departure; but this evidence was excluded from the inquest, by virtue of the famous Californian law that a Pagan was of necessity a liar, and that truth only resided in the breast of the Christian Caucasian, and was excluded from the general public for its incompatibility with Gabriel's subsequent flight, and the fact that the Chinaman, being a fool, was probably mistaken in the hour. Then there was the testimony of the tunnel-men to Gabriel's appearance on the hill that night. There was only one important proof not submitted to the public or the authorities—Mrs. Conroy's note—picked up by Sal, handed to Mrs. Markle, and given by her to Lawyer Maxwell. The knowledge of this document was restricted to the few already known to the reader.

A dozen or more theories of the motive of the deed at different hours of the day occupied and disturbed the public mind. That Gabriel had come upon a lover of his wife in the act of eloping with her, and had slain him out of hand, was the first. That Gabriel had decoyed the man to an interview by simulating his wife's handwriting, and then worked his revenge on his body, was accepted later as showing the necessary deliberation to constitute murder. That Gabriel and his wife had conjointly taken this method to rid themselves of a former lover who threatened exposure, was a still later theory. Towards evening, when One Horse Gulch had really leisure to put its heads together, it was generally understood that Gabriel and Mrs. Conroy had put out of their way a dangerous and necessarily rightful claimant to that mine which Gabriel had pretended to discover. This opinion was for some time—say two hours—the favourite one, agreeing as it did with the popular opinion of Gabriel's inability to discover a mine himself, and was only modified by another theory that Victor was not the real claimant, but a dangerous witness that the Conroys had found it necessary to dispose of. And when, possibly from some unguarded expression of Lawyer Maxwell, it was reported that Gabriel Conroy was an impostor under an assumed name, all further speculation was deemed unnecessary. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict against "John Doe, alias Gabriel Conroy," and One Horse Gulch added this injury of false pretence to other grievances complained of. One or two cases of horse-stealing and sluice-robbing in the neighbourhood were indefinitely but strongly connected with this discovery. If I am thus particular in citing these evidences of the various gradations of belief in the guilt of the accused, it is because they were peculiar to One Horse Gulch, and of course never obtained in more civilised communities.

It is scarcely necessary to say that one person in One Horse Gulch never wavered in her opinion of Gabriel's innocence, nor that that person was Mrs. Markle. That he was the victim of a vile conspiracy—that Mrs. Conroy was the real culprit, and had diabolically contrived to fasten the guilt upon her husband, Mrs. Markle not only believed herself, but absolutely contrived to make Lawyer Maxwell and Sal believe also. More than that, it had undoubtedly great power in restraining Sal's evidence before the inquest, which that impulsive and sympathetic young woman persisted in delivering behind a black veil and in a suit of the deepest mourning that could be hastily improvised in One Horse Gulch.

"Miss Clark's evidence," said the Silveropolis Messenger, "although broken by sobs and occasional expressions of indignation against the murderer, strongly impressed the jury as the natural eloquence of one connected with the tenderest ties to the unfortunate victim. It is said that she was an old acquaintance of Ramirez, who was visiting her in the hope of inducing her to consent to a happy termination of a life-long courtship, when the dastard hand of the murderer changed the bridal wreath to the veil of mourning. From expressions that dropped from the witness's lips, although restrained by natural modesty, it would not be strange if jealousy were shown to be one of the impelling causes. It is said that previous to his marriage the alleged Gabriel Conroy was a frequent visitor at the house of Miss Clark."

I venture to quote this extract not so much for its suggestion of a still later theory in the last sentence, as for its poetical elegance, and as an offset to the ruder record of the One Horse Gulch Banner, which, I grieve to say, was as follows:—

"Sal was no slouch of a witness. Rigged out in ten yards of Briggs' best black glazed muslin, and with a lot of black mosquito netting round her head, she pranced round the stand like a skittish hearse horse in fly-time. If Sal calculates to go into mourning for every man she has to sling hash to, we'd recommend her to buy up Briggs' stock and take one of Pat Hoolan's carriages for the season. There is a strong feeling among men whose heads are level, that this Minstrel Variety Performance is a bluff of the Messenger to keep from the public the real motives of the murderer, which it is pretty generally believed concerns some folks a little higher-toned than Sal. We mention no names but we would like to know what the Editor of the Messenger was doing in the counting-room of one of Pete Dumphy's emissaries at ten o'clock last evening. Looking up his bank account, eh? What's the size of the figures to-day? You hear us!"

At one o'clock that morning the Editor of the Messenger fired at the Editor of the Banner and missed him. At half-past one two men were wounded by pistol shots in a difficulty at Briggs' warehouse—cause not stated. At nine o'clock half a dozen men lounged down the main street and ascended the upper loft of Briggs' warehouse. In ten or fifteen minutes a dozen more from different saloons in the town lounged as indifferently in the direction of Briggs', until at half-past nine the assemblage in the loft numbered fifty men. During this interval a smaller party had gathered, apparently as accidentally and indefinitely as to purpose, on the steps of the little two-story brick Court House in which the prisoner was confined. At ten o'clock a horse was furiously ridden into town, and dropped exhausted at the outskirts. A few moments later a man hurriedly crossed the plaza toward the Court House. It was Mr. Jack Hamlin. But the Three Voices had preceded him, and from the steps of the Court House were already uttering the popular mandate.

It was addressed to a single man. A man who, deserted by his posse, and abandoned by his friends, had for the last twelve hours sat beside his charge, tireless, watchful, defiant, and resolute—Joe Hall, the Sheriff of Calaveras! He had been waiting for this summons, behind barricaded doors, with pistols in his belt, and no hope in his heart; a man of limited ideas and restricted resources, constant only to one intent—that of dying behind those bars, in defence of that legal trust, which his office and an extra fifty votes at the election only two months before had put into his hands. It had perplexed him for a moment that he heard the voices of some of these voters below him clamouring against him, but above their feebler pipe always rose another mandatory sentence, "We command you to take and safely keep the body of Gabriel Conroy," and being a simple man the recollection of the quaint phraseology strengthened him and cleared his mind. Ah me, I fear he had none of the external marks of a hero; as I remember him he was small, indistinctive, and fidgety, without the repose of strength; a man who at that extreme moment chewed tobacco and spat vigorously on the floor; who tweaked the ends of his scanty beard, paced the floor, and tried the locks of his pistols. Presently he stopped before Gabriel and said almost fiercely—

"You hear that—they are coming!"

Gabriel nodded. Two hours before, when the contemplated attack of the Vigilance Committee had been revealed to him, he had written a few lines to Lawyer Maxwell, which he entrusted to the sheriff. He had then relapsed into his usual tranquillity—serious, simple, and when he had occasion to speak, diffident and apologetic.

"Are you going to help me?" continued Hall.

"In course," said Gabriel, in quiet surprise, "ef you say so. But don't ye do nowt ez would be gettin' yourself into troubil along o' me. I ain't worth it. Maybe it 'ud be jest as square ef ye handed me over to them chaps out yer—allowin' I was a heep o' troubil to you—and reckonin' you'd about hed your sheer o' the keer o' me, and kinder passin' me round. But ef you do feel obligated to take keer o' me, ez hevin' promised the jedges and jury" (it is almost impossible to convey the gentle deprecatoriness of Gabriel's voice and accent at this juncture), "why," he added, "I'm with ye. I'm thar! You understand me!"

He rose slowly, and with quiet but powerfully significant deliberation placed the chair he had been sitting on back against the wall. The tone and act satisfied the sheriff. The seventy-four gunship, Gabriel Conroy, was clearing the decks for action.

There was an ominous lull in the outcries below, and then the solitary lifting up of a single voice, the Potential Voice of the night before! The sheriff walked to a window in the hall and opened it. The besieger and besieged measured each other with a look. Then came the Homeric chaff:—

"Git out o' that, Joe Hall, and run home to your mother. She's getting oneasy about ye!"

"The h—ll you say!" responded Hall, promptly, "and the old woman in such a hurry she had to borry Al Barker's hat and breeches to come here! Run home, old gal, and don't parse yourself off for a man agin!"

"This ain't no bluff, Joe Hall! Why don't ye call? Yer's fifty men; the returns are agin ye, and two precincts yet to hear from." (This was a double thrust, at Hall's former career as a gambler, and the closeness of his late election vote.)

"All right! send 'em up by express—mark 'em C. O. D." (The previous speaker was the expressman.)

"Blank you! Git!"

"Blank you! Come on!"

Here there was a rush at the door, the accidental discharge of a pistol, and the window was slammed down. Words ceased, deeds began.

A few hours before, Hall had removed his prisoner from the uncertain tenure and accessible position of the cells below to the open court-room of the second floor, inaccessible by windows, and lit by a skylight in the roof, above the reach of the crowd, whose massive doors were barricaded by benches and desks. A smaller door at the side, easily secured, was left open for reconnoitring. The approach to the court-room was by a narrow stairway, halfway down whose length Gabriel had thrust the long court-room table as a barricade to the besiegers. The lower outer door, secured by the sheriff after the desertion of his underlings, soon began to show signs of weakening under the vigorous battery from without. From the landing the two men watched it eagerly. As it slowly yielded, the sheriff drew back toward the side door and beckoned Gabriel to follow; but with a hasty sign Gabriel suddenly sprang forward and dropped beneath the table as the door with a crash fell inward, beaten from its hinges. There was a rush of trampling feet to the stairway, a cry of baffled rage over the impeding table, a sudden scramble up and upon it, and then, as if on its own volition, the long table suddenly reared itself on end, and staggering a moment toppled backward with its clinging human burden on the heads of the thronging mass below. There was a cry, a sudden stampede of the Philistines to the street, and Samson, rising to his feet, slowly walked to the side door, and re-entered the court-room. But at the same instant an agile besieger who, unnoticed, had crossed the Rubicon, darted from his concealment, and dashed by Gabriel into the room. There was a shout from the sheriff, the door was closed hastily, a shot, and the intruder fell. But the next moment he staggered to his knees, with outstretched hands, "Hold up! I'm yer to help ye!"

It was Jack Hamlin! haggard, dusty, grimy; his gay feathers bedraggled, his tall hat battered, his spotless shirt torn open at the throat, his eyes and cheeks burning with fever, the blood dripping from the bullet wound in his leg, but still Jack Hamlin, strong and audacious. By a common instinct both men dropped their weapons, ran and lifted him in their arms.

"There—shove that chair under me! that'll do," said Hamlin, coolly, "We're even now, Joe Hall; that shot wiped out old scores, even if it has crippled me, and lost ye my valuable aid. Dry up! and listen to me, and then leave me here! there's but one way of escape. It's up there!" (he pointed to the skylight) "the rear wall hangs over the Wingdam ditch and gully. Once on the roof you can drop over with this rope, which you must unwind from my body, for I'm d—d if I can do it myself. Can you reach the skylight?"

"There's a step-ladder from the gallery," said the sheriff, joyously, "but won't they see us, and be prepared?"

"Before they can reach the gully by going round, you'll be half a mile away in the woods. But what in blank are you waiting for? Go! You can hold on here for ten minutes more if they attack the same point; but if they think of the skylight, and fetch ladders, you're gone in! Go!"

There was another rush on the staircase without; the surging of an immense wave against the heavy folding doors, the blows of pick and crowbar, the gradual yielding of the barricade a few inches, and the splintering of benches by a few pistol shots fired through the springing crevices of the doors. And yet the sheriff hesitated. Suddenly Gabriel stooped down, lifted the wounded man to his shoulder as if he had been an infant, and beckoning to the sheriff started for the gallery. But he had not taken two steps before he staggered and lapsed heavily against Hall, who, in his turn, stopped and clutched the railing. At the same moment the thunder of the besiegers seemed to increase; not only the door, but the windows rattled, the heavy chandelier fell with a crash, carrying a part of the plaster and the elaborate cornice with it, a shower of bricks fell through the skylight, and a cry, quite distinct from anything heard before, rose from without. There was a pause in the hall, and then the sudden rush of feet down the staircase, and all was still again. The three men gazed in each other's whitened faces.

"An earthquake," said the sheriff.

"So much the better," said Jack. "It gives us time—forward!"

They reached the gallery and the little step-ladder that led to a door that opened upon the roof, Gabriel preceding with his burden. There was another rush up the staircase without the court room, but this time there was no yielding in the door; the earthquake that had shaken the foundations and settled the walls had sealed it firmly.

Gabriel was first to step out on the roof, carrying Jack Hamlin. But as he did so another thrill ran through the building and he dropped on his knees to save himself from falling, while the door closed smartly behind him. In another moment the shock had passed, and Gabriel, putting down his burden, turned to open the door for the sheriff. But to his alarm it did not yield to his pressure; the earthquake had sealed it as it had the door below, and Joe Hall was left a prisoner.

It was Gabriel's turn to hesitate and look at his companion. But Jack was gazing into the street below. Then he looked up and said, "We must go on now, Gabriel,—for—for they've got a ladder!"

Gabriel rose again to his feet and lifted the wounded man. The curve of the domed roof was slight; in the centre, on a rough cupola or base, the figure of Justice, fifteen feet high, rudely carved in wood, towered above them with drawn sword and dangling scales. Gabriel reached the cupola and crouched behind it, as a shout rose from the street below that told he was discovered. A few shots were fired, one bullet imbedded itself in the naked blade of the Goddess, and another with cruel irony, shattered the equanimity of her balance. "Unwind the cord from me," said Hamlin. Gabriel did so. "Fasten one end to the chimney or the statue." But the chimney was levelled by the earthquake, and even the statue was trembling on its pedestal. Gabriel secured the rope to an iron girder of the skylight, and crawling on the roof dropped it cautiously over the gable. But it was several feet too short—too far for a cripple to drop! Gabriel crawled back to Hamlin. "You must go first," he said, quietly, "I will hold the rope over the gable. You can trust me."

Without waiting for Hamlin's reply he fastened the rope under his arms and half-lifted, half-dragged him to the gable. Then pressing his hand silently, he laid himself down and lowered the wounded man safely to the ground. He had recovered the rope again, and crawling to the cupola, was about to fasten the line to the iron girder when something slowly rose above the level of the roof beyond him. The uprights of a ladder!

The Three Voices had got tired of waiting a reply to their oft-reiterated question, and had mounted the ladder by way of forcing an answer at the muzzles of their revolvers. They reached the level of the roof, one after another, and again propounded their inquiry. And then as it seemed to their awe-stricken fancy, the only figure there—the statue of Justice—awoke to their appeal. Awoke! leaned towards them; advanced its awful sword and shook its broken balance, and then toppling forward with one mighty impulse, came down upon them, swept them from the ladder, and silenced the Voices for ever! And from behind its pedestal Gabriel arose, panting, pale, but triumphant.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN TENEBRIS SERVARE FIDEM.

Although a large man, Gabriel was lithe and active, and dropped the intervening distance where the rope was scant, lightly, and without injury. Happily the falling of the statue was looked upon as the result of another earthquake shock, and its disastrous effect upon the storming party for awhile checked the attack. Gabriel lifted his half-fainting ally in his arms, and gaining the friendly shelter of the ditch, in ten minutes was beyond the confines of One Horse Gulch, and in the shadow of the pines of Conroy's Hill. There were several tunnel openings only known to him. Luckily the first was partly screened by a fall of rock loosened by the earthquake from the hill above, and satisfied that it would be unrecognised by any eye less keen than his own, Gabriel turned into it with his fainting burden. And it was high time. For the hÆmorrhage from Jack Hamlin's wound was so great that that gentleman, after a faint attempt to wave his battered hat above his dishevelled curls, suddenly succumbed, and lay as cold and senseless and beautiful as a carven Apollo.

Then Gabriel stripped him, and found an ugly hole in his thigh that had narrowly escaped traversing the femoral artery, and set himself about that rude surgery which he had acquired by experience, and that more delicate nursing which was instinctive with him. He was shocked at the revelation of a degree of emaciation in the figure of this young fellow that he had not before suspected. Gabriel had nursed many sick men, and here was one who clearly ought to be under the doctor's hands, economising his vitality as a sedentary invalid, who had shown himself to him hitherto only as a man of superabundant activity and animal spirits. Whence came the power that had animated this fragile shell? Gabriel was perplexed; he looked down upon his own huge frame with a new and sudden sense of apology and depreciation, as if it were an offence to this spare and bloodless Adonis.

And then with an infinite gentleness, as of a young mother over her newborn babe, he stanched the blood and bound up the wounds of his new friend, so skilfully that he never winced, and with a peculiar purring accompaniment that lulled him to repose. Once only, as he held him in his arms, did he change his expression, and that was when a shadow and a tread—perhaps of a passing hare or squirrel—crossed the mouth of his cave, when he suddenly caught the body to his breast with the fierceness of a lioness interrupted with her cubs. In his own rough experience he was much awed by the purple and fine linen of this fine gentleman's underclothing—not knowing the prevailing habits of his class—and when he had occasion to open his bosom to listen to the faint beatings of his heart, he put aside with great delicacy and instinctive honour a fine gold chain from which depended some few relics and keepsakes which this scamp wore. But one was a photograph, set in an open locket, that he could not fail to see, and that at once held him breathless above it. It was the exact outline and features of his sister Grace, but with a strange shadow over that complexion which he remembered well as beautiful, that struck him with superstitious awe. He scanned it again eagerly. "Maybe it was a dark day when she sot!" he murmured softly to himself; "maybe it's the light in this yer tunnel; maybe the heat o' this poor chap's buzzum hez kinder turned it. It ain't measles, fur she hed 'em along o' Olly." He paused and looked at the unconscious man before him, as if trying to connect him with the past. "No," he said simply, with a resigned sigh, "it's agin reason! She never knowed him! It's only my foolishness, and my thinkin' and thinkin' o' her so much! It's another gal, and none o' your business, Gabe, and you a' prying inter another man's secrets, and takin' advantage of him when he's down." He hurriedly replaced it in his companion's bosom, and closed the collar of his shirt, as Jack's lips moved. "Pete!" he called, feebly.

"It's his pardner, maybe, he's callin' on," said Gabriel to himself; then aloud, with the usual, comforting professional assent, "In course, Pete, surely! He's coming, right off—he'll be yer afore you know it."

"Pete," continued Jack, forcibly, "take the mare off my leg, she's breaking it! Don't you see? She's stumbled! D—n it, quick! I'll be late. They'll string him up before I get there!"

In a moment Gabriel's stout heart sank. If fever should set in—if he should become delirious, they would be lost. Providentially, however, Jack's aberration was only for a moment; he presently opened his black eyes and stared at Gabriel. Gabriel smiled assuringly. "Am I dead and buried," said Jack, gravely, looking around the dark vault, "or have I got 'em again?"

"Ye wuz took bad fur a minit—that's all," said Gabriel, reassuringly, much relieved himself, "yer all right now!"

Hamlin tried to rise but could not. "That's a lie," he said, cheerfully. "What's to be done?"

"Ef you'd let me hev my say, without gettin' riled," said Gabriel, apologetically, "I'd tell ye. Look yer," he continued, persuasively, "ye ought to hev a doctor afore thet wound gets inflamed; and ye ain't goin' to get one, bein' packed round by me. Now don't ye flare up, but harkin! Allowin' I goes out to them chaps ez is huntin' us, and sez, 'look yer, you kin take me, provided ye don't bear no malice agin my friend, and you sends a doctor to fetch him outer the tunnel.' Don't yer see, they can't prove anythin' agin ye, anyway," continued Gabriel, with a look of the intensest cunning, "I'll swear I took you pris'ner, and Joe won't go back on his shot."

In spite of his pain and danger this proposition afforded Jack Hamlin apparently the largest enjoyment. "Thank ye," he said, with a smile, "but as there's a warrant, by this time, out against me for horse-stealing, I reckon I won't put myself in the way of their nursing. They might forgive you for killing a Mexican of no great market value, but they ain't goin' to extend the right hand of fellowship to me after running off with their ringleader's mustang! Particularly when that animal's foundered and knee-sprung. No, sir!"

Gabriel stared at his companion without speaking.

"I was late coming back with Olly to Wingdam. I had to swap the horse and buggy for the mare without having time to arrange particulars with the owner. I don't wonder you're shocked," continued Jack, mischievously, affecting to misunderstand Gabriel's silence, "but thet's me. Thet's the kind of company you've got into. Procrastination and want of punctuality has brought me to this. Never procrastinate, Gabriel. Always make it a point to make it a rule, never to be late at the Sabbath school!"

"Ef I hed owt to give ye," said Gabriel, ruefully, "a drop o' whisky, or suthin' to keep up your stren'th!"

"I never touch intoxicating liquors without the consent of my physician," said Jack, gravely, "they're too exciting! I must be kept free from all excitement. Something soothing, or sedentary like this," he added, striking his leg. But even through his mischievous smile his face paled, and a spasm of pain crossed it.

"I reckon we'll hev to stick yer ontil dark," said Gabriel, "and then strike acrost the gully to the woods on Conroy's Hill. Ye'll be easier thar, and we're safe ontil sun-up, when we kin hunt another tunnel. Thar ain't no choice," added Gabriel, apologetically.

Jack made a grimace, and cast a glance around the walls of the tunnel. The luxurious scamp missed his usual comfortable surroundings. "Well," he assented, with a sigh, "I suppose the game's made anyway! and we've got to stick here like snails on a rock for an hour yet. Well," he continued, impatiently, as Gabriel, after improvising a rude couch for him with some withered pine tassels gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, sat down beside him, "are you goin' to bore me to death, now that you've got me here—sittin' there like an owl? Why don't you say something?"

"Say what?" asked Gabriel, simply.

"Anything! Lie if you want to; only talk!"

"I'd like to put a question to ye, Mr. Hamlin," said Gabriel, with great gentleness,—"allowin' in course, ye'll answer or no jest ez as is agree'ble to ye—reckonin' it's no business o' mine nor pryin' into secrets, ony jess to pass away the time ontil sundown. When you was tuk bad a spell ago, unloosin' yer shirt thar, I got to see a pictur that ye hev around yer neck. I ain't askin' who nor which it is—but ony this—ez thet—thet—thet young woman dark complected ez that picter allows her to be?"

Jack's face had recovered its colour by the time that Gabriel had finished, and he answered promptly, "A d—d sight more so! Why, that picture's fair alongside of her!"

Gabriel looked a little disappointed, Hamlin was instantly up in arms. "Yes, sir—and when I say that," he returned, "I mean, by thunder, that the whitest faced woman in the world don't begin to be as handsome. Thar ain't an angel that she couldn't give points to and beat! That's her style! It don't," continued Mr. Hamlin, taking the picture from his breast, and wiping its face with his handkerchief—"it don't begin to do her justice. What," he asked suddenly and aggressively, "have you got to say about it, anyway?"

"I reckoned it kinder favoured my sister Grace," said Gabriel, submissively. "Ye didn't know her, Mr. Hamlin? She was lost sence '49—thet's all!"

Mr. Hamlin measured Gabriel with a contempt that was delicious in its sublime audacity and unconsciousness. "Your sister?" he repeated, "that's a healthy lookin' sister of such a man as you—ain't it? Why, look at it," roared Jack, thrusting the picture under Gabriel's nose. "Why, it's—it's a lady!"

"Ye musn't jedge Gracey by me, nor even Olly," interposed Gabriel, gently, evading Mr. Hamlin's contempt.

But Jack was not to be appeased, "Does your sister sing like an angel, and talk Spanish like Governor Alvarado: is she connected with one of the oldest Spanish families in the state; does she run a rancho and thirty square leagues of land, and is Dolores Salvatierra her nickname? Is her complexion like the young bark of the madroÑo—the most beautiful thing ever seen—did every other woman look chalky beside her, eh?"

"No!" said Gabriel, with a sigh—"it was just my foolishness, Mr. Hamlin. But seein' that picter, kinder"——

"I stole it," interrupted Jack, with the same frankness. "I saw it in her parlour, on the table, and I froze to it when no one was looking. Lord, she wouldn't have given it to me. I reckon those relatives of hers would have made it very lively for me if they'd suspected it. Hoss stealing ain't a circumstance to this, Gabriel," said Jack, with a reckless laugh. Then with equal frankness, and a picturesque freedom of description, he related his first and only interview with Donna Dolores. I am glad to say that this scamp exaggerated, if anything, the hopelessness of his case, dwelt but slightly on his own services, and concealed the fact that Donna Dolores had even thanked him. "You can reckon from this the extent of my affection for that Johnny Ramirez, and why I just froze to you when I heard you'd dropped him. But come now, it's your deal; tell us all about it. The boys put it up that he was hangin' round your wife,—and you went for him for all he was worth. Go on—I'm waiting—and," added Jack, as a spasm of pain passed across his face, "and aching to that degree that I'll yell if you don't take my mind off it."

But Gabriel's face was grave and his lips silent as he bent over Mr. Hamlin to adjust the bandages. "Go on," said Jack, darkly, "or I'll tear off these rags and bleed to death before your eyes. What are you afraid of? I know all about your wife—you can't tell me anything about her. Didn't I spot her in Sacramento—before she married you—when she had this same Chilino, Ramirez, on a string. Why, she's fooled him as she has you. You ain't such a blasted fool as to be stuck after her still, are you?" and Jack raised himself on his elbow the more intently to regard this possible transcendent idiot.

"You was speakin' o' this Mexican, Ramirez," said Gabriel, after a pause, fixing his now clear and untroubled eyes on his interlocutor.

"Of course," roared out Jack, impatiently, "did you think I was talking of——?" Here Mr. Hamlin offered a name that suggested the most complete and perfect antithesis known to modern reason.

"I didn't kill him!" said Gabriel, quietly.

"Of course not," said Jack, promptly. "He sorter stumbled and fell over on your bowie-knife as you were pickin' your teeth with it. But go on—how did you do it? Where did you spot him? Did he make any fight? Has he got any sand in him?"

"I tell ye I didn't kill him!"

"Who did, then?" screamed Jack, furious with pain and impatience.

"I don't know—I reckon—that is——" and Gabriel stopped short with a wistful perplexed look at his companion.

"Perhaps, Mr. Gabriel Conroy," said Jack, with sudden coolness and deliberation of speech, and a baleful light in his dark eyes, "perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what this means—what is your little game? Perhaps you'll kindly inform me what I'm lying here crippled for? What you were doing up in the Court House, when you were driving those people crazy with excitement? What you're hiding here in this blank family vault for? And maybe, if you've got time, you'll tell me what was the reason I made that pleasant little trip to Sacramento? I know I required the exercise, and then there was the honour of being introduced to your little sister—but perhaps you'll tell me WHAT IT WAS FOR!"

"Jack," said Gabriel, leaning forward, with a sudden return of his old trouble and perplexity, "I thought she did it! and thinkin' that—when they asked me—I took it upon myself! I didn't know to ring you into this, Jack! I thought—I thought—thet—it 'ud all be one—thet they'd hang me up afore this—I did, Jack, honest!"

"And you didn't kill Ramirez?"

"No."

"And you reckoned your wife did?"

"Yes."

"And you took the thing on yourself?"

"I did."

"You did!"

"I did!"

"You DID?"

"I did!"

Mr. Hamlin rolled over on his back, and began to whistle "When the spring time comes, gentle Annie!" as the only way of expressing his inordinate contempt for the whole proceeding.

Gabriel slowly slid his hand under Mr. Hamlin's helpless back, and under pretext of arranging his bandages, lifted him in his arms like a truculent babe. "Jack," he said, softly, "ef thet picter of yours—that coloured woman"——

"Which?" said Jack, fiercely.

"I mean—thet purty creature—ef she and you hed been married, and you'd found out accidental like that she'd fooled ye—more belike, Jack," he added, hastily, "o' your own foolishness—than her little game—and"——

"That woman was a lady," interrupted Jack, savagely, "and your wife's a"——But he paused, looking into Gabriel's face, and then added, "Oh git! will you! Leave me alone! 'I want to be an angel and with the angels stand.'"

"And thet woman hez a secret," continued Gabriel, unmindful of the interruption, "and bein' hounded by the man az knows it, up and kills him, ye wouldn't let thet woman—that poor pooty creeture—suffer for it! No, Jack! Ye would rather pint your own toes up to the sky than do it. It ain't in ye, Jack, and it ain't in me, so help me, God!"

"This is all very touching, Mr. Conroy, and does credit, sir, to your head and heart, and I kin feel it drawing Hall's ball out of my leg while you're talkin'," said Jack, with his black eyes evading Gabriel's and wandering to the entrance of the tunnel. "What time is it, you d—d old fool, ain't it dark enough yet to git outer this hole?" He groaned, and after a pause added fiercely, "How do you know your wife did it?"

Gabriel swiftly, and for him even concisely, related the events of the day from his meeting with Ramirez in the morning, to the time that he had stumbled upon the body of Victor Ramirez on his return to keep the appointment at his wife's written request.

Jack only interrupted him once to inquire why, after discovering the murder, he had not gone on to keep his appointment.

"I thought it wa'n't of no use," said Gabriel, simply; "I didn't want to let her see I knowed it."

Hamlin groaned, "If you had you would have found her in the company of the man who did do it, you daddering old idiot!"

"What man?" asked Gabriel.

"The first man you saw your wife with that morning; the man I ought to be helping now, instead of lyin' here."

"You don't mean to allow, Jack, ez you reckon she didn't do it?" asked Gabriel, in alarm.

"I do," said Hamlin, coolly.

"Then what did she reckon to let on by that note?" said Gabriel, with a sudden look of cunning.

"Don't know," returned Jack, "like as not, being a d—d fool, you didn't read it right! hand it over and let me see it."

Gabriel (hesitatingly): "I can't."

Hamlin: "You can't?"

Gabriel (apologetically): "I tore it up!"

Hamlin (with frightful deliberation): "you DID?"'

"I did."

Jack (after a long crushing silence): "Were you ever under medical treatment for these spells?"

Gabriel (with great simplicity and submission): "They allers used to allow I waz queer."

Hamlin (after another pause): "Has Pete Dumphy got anything agin you?"

Gabriel (surprisedly): "No."

Hamlin (languidly): "It was his right hand man, his agent at Wingdam that started up the Vigilantes! I heard him, and saw him in the crowd hounding 'em on."

Gabriel (simply): "I reckon you're out thar, Jack, Dumphy's my friend. It was him that first gin me the money to open this yer mine. And I'm his superintendent!"

Jack: "Oh!" (after another pause). "Is there any first-class Lunatic Asylum in this county where they would take in two men, one an incurable, and the other sufferin' from a gunshot wound brought on by playin' with firearms?"

Gabriel (with a deep sigh): "Ye mus'n't talk, Jack, ye must be quiet till dark."

Jack, dragged down by pain, and exhausted in the intervals of each paroxysm was quiescent.

Gradually, the faint light that had filtered through the brush and dÉbris before the tunnel faded quite away, and a damp charnel-house chill struck through the limbs of the two refugees, and made them shiver; the flow of water from the dripping walls seemed to have increased; Gabriel's experienced eye had already noted that the earthquake had apparently opened seams in the gully and closed up one of the leads. He carefully laid his burden down again, and crept to the opening. The distant hum of voices and occupation had ceased, the sun was setting; in a few moments, calculating on the brief twilight of the Mountain region, it would be dark, and they might with safety leave their hiding-place. As he was returning, he noticed a slant beam of light, hitherto unobserved, crossing the tunnel from an old drift. Examining it more closely, Gabriel was amazed to find that during the earthquake a "cave" had taken place in the drift, possibly precipitated by the shock, disclosing the more surprising fact that there had been a previous slight but positive excavation on the hill side, above the tunnel, that antedated any record of One Horse Gulch known to Gabriel. He was perfectly familiar with every foot of the hill side, and the existence of this ancient prospecting "hole" had never been even suspected by him. While he was still gazing at the opening, his foot struck against some glittering metallic substance. He stooped and picked up a small tin can, not larger than a sardine box, hermetically sealed and soldered, in which some inscription had been traced, but which the darkness of the tunnel prevented his deciphering. In the faint hope that it might contain something of benefit to his companion, Gabriel returned to the opening, and even ventured to step beyond its shadow. But all attempts to read the inscription were in vain. He opened the box with a sharp stone; it contained, to his great disappointment, only a memorandum book and some papers. He swept them into the pocket of his blouse, and re-entered the tunnel. He had not been absent altogether more than five minutes, but when he reached the place where he had left Jack, he was gone!

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH HECTOR ARISES FROM THE DITCH.

He stood for a moment breathless and paralysed with surprise; then he began slowly and deliberately to examine the tunnel step by step. When he had proceeded a hundred feet from the spot, to his great relief he came upon Jack Hamlin, sitting upright in a side drift. His manner was feverish and excited, and his declaration that he had not moved from the place where Gabriel had left him at once was accepted by the latter as the aberration of incipient inflammation and fever. When Gabriel stated that it was time to go, he replied, "Yes," and added with such significance that his business with the murderer of Victor Ramirez was now over, and that he was ready to enter the Lunatic Asylum at once, that Gabriel with great precipitation lifted him in his arms and carried him without delay from the tunnel. Once more in the open air the energies of both men seemed to rally; Jack became as a mere feather in Gabriel's powerful arms, and even forgot his querulous opposition to being treated as a helpless child, while Gabriel trod the familiar banks of the ditch, climbed the long ascent and threaded the aisles of the pillared pines of Reservoir Hill with the free experienced feet of the mountaineer. Here Gabriel knew he was safe until daybreak, and gathered together some withered pine boughs and its fragrant tassels for a couch for his helpless companion. And here, as he feared, fever set in; the respiration of the wounded man grew quick and hurried; he began to talk rapidly and incoherently, of Olly, of Ramirez, of the beautiful girl whose picture hung upon his breast, of Gabriel himself, and finally of a stranger who was, as it seemed to him, his sole auditor, the gratuitous coinage of his excited fancy. Once or twice he raised his voice to a shout, and then to Gabriel's great alarm suddenly he began to sing, and before Gabriel could place his hand upon his mouth he had trolled out the verse of a popular ballad. The rushing river below them gurgled, beat its bars, and sang an accompaniment, the swaying pine sighed and creaked in unison, the patient stars above them stared and bent breathlessly, and then to Gabriel's exalted consciousness an echo of the wounded man's song arose from the gulch below! For a moment he held his breath with an awful mingling of joy and fear. Was he going mad too? or was it really the voice of little Olly? The delirious man beside him answered his query with another verse; the antiphonal response rose again from the valley. Gabriel hesitated no longer, but with feverish hands gathered a few dried twigs and pine cones into a pile, and touched a match to them. At the next moment they flashed a beacon to the sky, in another there was a crackling of the underbrush and the hurried onset of two figures, and before the slow Gabriel could recover from his astonishment, Olly flew, panting, to his arms, while her companion, the faithful Pete, sank breathlessly beside his wounded and insensible master.

Olly was first to find her speech. That speech, after the unfailing instincts of her sex in moments of excitement, was the instant arraignment of somebody else as the cause of that excitement, and at once put the whole universe on the defensive.

"Why didn't you send word where you was?" she said, impatiently, "and wot did you have it so dark for, and up a steep hill, and leavin' me alone at Wingdam, and why didn't you call without singin'?"

And then Gabriel, after the fashion of his sex, ignored all but the present, and holding Olly in his arms, said—

"It's my little girl, ain't it? Come to her own brother Gabe! bless her!"

Whereat Mr. Hamlin, after the fashion of lunatics of any sex, must needs be consistent, and break out again into song.

"He's looney, Olly, what with fever along o' bein' shot in the leg a' savin' me, ez izn't worth savin'," explained Gabriel, apologetically. "It was him ez did the singin'."

Then Olly, still following the feminine instinct, at once deserted conscious rectitude for indefensible error, and flew to Mr. Hamlin's side.

"Oh, where is he hurt, Pete? is he going to die?"

And Pete, suspicious of any medication but his own, replied doubtfully, "He looks bad, Miss Olly, dat's a fac—but now bein' in my han's, bress de Lord A'mighty, and we able to minister to him, we hopes fur de bess. Your brudder meant well, is a fair meanin' man, miss—a toll'able nuss, but he ain't got the peerfeshn'l knowledge dat Mars Jack in de habit o' gettin'." Here Pete unslung from his shoulders a wallet, and proceeded to extract therefrom a small medicine case, with the resigned air of the family physician, who has been called full late to remedy the practice of rustic empiricism.

"How did ye come yer?" asked Gabriel of Olly, when he had submissively transferred his wounded charge to Pete. "What made ye allow I was hidin' yer? How did ye reckon to find me? but ye was allus peart and onhanded, Olly," he suggested, gazing admiringly at his sister.

"When I woke up at Wingdam, after Jack went away, who should I find, Gabe, but Lawyer Maxwell standin' thar, and askin' me a heap o' questions. I supposed you'd been makin' a fool o' yourself agin, Gabe, and afore I let on thet I knowed a word, I jist made him tell me everythin' about you, Gabe, and it was orful! and you bein' arrested fur murder, ez wouldn't harm a fly, let alone that Mexican ez I never liked, Gabe, and all this comes of tendin' his legs instead o' lookin' arter me. And all them questions waz about July, and whether she wasn't your enemy, and if they ever waz a woman, Gabe, ez waz sweet on you, you know it was July! And all thet kind o' foolishness! And then when he couldn't get ennythin' out o' me agin July, he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you, fur he said ther was talk o' the Vigilantes gettin' hold o' ye afore the trial, and he was goin' to get an order to take you outer the county, and he reckoned they wouldn't dare to tech ye if I waz with ye, Gabe—and I'd like to see 'em try it! and he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you! And Pete—and thar ain't a whiter nigger livin' than that ole man—said he would—reckonin' you know to find Jack, as he allowed to me they'd hev to kill afore they got you—and he came down yer with me. And when we got yer—you was off—and the sheriff gone—and the Vigilantes—what with bein' killed, the biggest o' them, by the earthquake—what was orful, Gabe, but we bein' on the road didn't get to feel!—jest scared outer their butes! And then a Chinyman gins us your note"——

"My note?" interrupted Gabriel, "I didn't send ye any note."

"Then his note," said Olly, impatiently, pointing to Hamlin, "sayin' 'You'll find your friends on Conroy's Hill!'—don't you see, Gabe?" continued Olly, stamping her foot in fury at her brother's slowness of comprehension, "and so we came and heard Jack singin', and a mighty foolish thing it was to do, and yer we are!"

"But he didn't send any note, Olly," persisted Gabriel.

"Well, you awful old Gabe, what difference does it make who sent it?" continued the practical Olly; "here we are, along o' thet note, and," she added, feeling in her pocket, "there's the note!"

She handed Gabriel a small slip of paper with the pencilled words, "You'll find your friends waiting for you to-night on Conroy's Hill."

The handwriting was unfamiliar, but even if it were Jack's, how did he manage to send it without his knowledge? He had not lost sight of Jack except during the few moments he had reconnoitred the mouth of the tunnel, since they had escaped from the Court House. Gabriel was perplexed; in the presence of this anonymous note he was confused and speechless, and could only pass his hand helplessly across his forehead. "But it's all right now, Gabe," continued Olly, reassuringly, "the Vigilantes hev run away—what was left of them; the sheriff ain't to be found nowhar! This yer earthquake hez frightened everybody outer the idea of huntin' ye—nobody talks of ennything but the earthquake; they even say, Gabe—I forgot to tell ye—that our claim on Conroy Hill has busted, too, and the mine ain't worth shucks now! But there's no one to interfere with us now, Gabe! And we're goin' to get into a waggin that Pete hez bespoke for us at the head of Reservoir Gulch to-morrow mornin' at sun-up! And then Pete sez we kin git down to Stockton and 'Frisco and out to a place called San Antonio, that the devil himself wouldn't think o' goin' to, and thar we kin stay, me and you and Jack, until this whole thing has blown over and Jack gits well agin and July comes back."

Gabriel, still holding the hand of his sister, dared not tell her of the suspicions of Lawyer Maxwell, regarding her sister-in-law's complicity in this murder, nor Jack's conviction of her infidelity, and he hesitated. But after a pause, he suggested with a consciousness of great discretion and artfulness, "Suppose thet July doesn't come back?"

"Look yer, Gabe," said Olly, suddenly, "ef yer goin' to be thet foolish and ridiklus agin, I'll jess quit. Ez if thet woman would ever leave ye." (Gabriel groaned inwardly.) "Why, when she hears o' this, wild hosses couldn't keep her from ye. Don't be a mule, Gabe, don't!" And Gabriel was dumb.

Meantime, under the influence of some anodyne which Pete had found in his medicine chest, Mr. Hamlin became quiet and pretermitted his vocal obligato. Gabriel, whose superb physical adjustment no mental excitement could possibly overthrow, and whose regular habits were never broken by anxiety, nodded, even while holding Olly's hand, and in due time slept, and I regret to say—writing of a hero—snored. After a while Olly herself succumbed to the drowsy coolness of the night, and wrapped in Mr. Hamlin's shawl, pillowed her head upon her brother's broad breast and slept too. Only Pete remained to keep the watch, he being comparatively fresh and strong, and declaring that the condition of Mr. Hamlin required his constant attention.

It was after midnight that Olly dreamed a troubled dream. She thought that she was riding with Mr. Hamlin to seek her brother, when she suddenly came upon a crowd of excited men who were bearing Gabriel to the gallows. She thought that she turned to Mr. Hamlin frantically for assistance, when she saw to her horror that his face had changed—that it was no longer he who sat beside her, but a strange, wild-looking, haggard man—a man whose face was old and pinched, but whose grey hair was discoloured by a faded dye that had worn away, leaving the original colour in patches, and the antique foppery of whose dress was deranged by violent exertion, and grimy with the dust of travel—a dandy whose strapped trousers of a bygone fashion were ridiculously loosened in one leg, whose high stock was unbuckled and awry! She awoke with a start. Even then her dream was so vivid that it seemed to her this face was actually bending over her with such a pathetic earnestness and inquiry that she called aloud. It was some minutes before Pete came to her, but as he averred, albeit somewhat incoherently and rubbing his eyes to show that he had not closed them, that he had never slept a wink, and that it was impossible for any stranger to have come upon them without his knowledge, Olly was obliged to accept it all as a dream! But she did not sleep again. She watched the moon slowly sink behind the serrated pines of Conroy's Hill; she listened to the crackling tread of strange animals in the underbrush, to the far-off rattle of wheels on the Wingdam turnpike, until the dark outline of the tree trunks returned, and with the cold fires of the mountain sunrise the chilly tree-tops awoke to winged life, and the twitter of birds, while the faint mists of the river lingered with the paling moon like tired sentinels for the relief of the coming day. And then Olly awoke her companions. They struggled back into consciousness with characteristic expression. Gabriel slowly and apologetically, as of one who had overslept himself; Jack Hamlin violently and aggressively, as if some unfair advantage had been taken of his human weakness that it was necessary to combat at once. I am sorry to say that his recognition of Pete was accompanied by a degree of profanity and irreverence that was dangerous to his own physical weakness. "And you had to trapse down yer, sniffin' about my tracks, you black and tan idiot," continued Mr. Hamlin, raising himself on his arm, "and after I'd left everything all straight at Wingdam—and jest as I was beginning to reform and lead a new life! How do, Olly? You'll excuse my not rising. Come and kiss me! If that nigger of mine has let you want for anything, jest tell me and I'll discharge him. Well! hang it all! what are you waitin' for? Here it's daybreak and we've got to get down to the head of Reservoir Gulch. Come, little children, the picnic is over!"

Thus adjured, Gabriel rose, and lifting Mr. Hamlin in his arms with infinite care and tenderness, headed the quaint procession. Mr. Hamlin, perhaps recognising some absurdity in the situation, forbore exercising his querulous profanity on the man who held him helpless as an infant, and Olly and Pete followed slowly behind.

Their way led down Reservoir CaÑon, beautiful, hopeful, and bracing in the early morning air. A few birds, awakened by the passing tread, started into song a moment, and then were still. With a cautious gentleness, habitual to the man, Gabriel forbore, as he strode along, to step upon the few woodland blossoms yet left to the dry summer woods. There was a strange fragrance in the air, the light odours liberated from a thousand nameless herbs, the faint melancholy spicing of dead leaves. There was, moreover, that sense of novelty which Nature always brings with the dawn in deep forests; a fancy that during the night the earth had been created anew, and was fresh from the Maker's hand, as yet untried by burden or tribulation, and guiltless of a Past. And so it seemed to the little caravan—albeit fleeing from danger and death—that yesterday and its fears were far away, or had, in some unaccountable way, shrunk behind them in the west with the swiftly dwindling night. Olly once or twice strayed from the trail to pick an opening flower or lingering berry; Pete hummed to himself the fragment of an old camp-meeting song.

And so they walked on, keeping the rosy dawn and its promise before them. From time to time the sound of far-off voices came to them faintly. Slowly the light quickened; morning stole down the hills upon them stealthily, and at last the entrance of the caÑon became dimly outlined. Olly uttered a shout and pointed to a black object moving backward and forward before the opening. It was the waggon and team awaiting them. Olly's shout was answered by a whistle from the driver, and they quickened their pace joyfully; in another moment they would be beyond the reach of danger.

Suddenly a voice that seemed to start from the ground before them called on Gabriel to stop! He did so unconsciously, drawing Hamlin closer to him with one hand, and with the other making a broad protecting sweep toward Olly. And then a figure rose slowly from the ditch at the roadside and barred their passage.

It was only a single man! A small man bespattered with the slime of the ditch and torn with brambles; a man exhausted with fatigue and tremulous with nervous excitement, but still erect and threatening. A man whom Gabriel and Hamlin instantly recognised, even through his rags and exhaustion! It was Joe Hall—the sheriff of Calaveras! He held a pistol in his right hand, even while his left exhaustedly sought the support of a tree! By a common instinct both men saw that while the hand was feeble the muzzle of the weapon covered them.

"Gabriel Conroy, I want you," said the apparition.

"He's got us lined! Drop me," whispered Hamlin, hastily, "drop me! I'll spoil his aim."

But Gabriel, by a swift, dexterous movement that seemed incompatible with his usual deliberation, instantly transferred Hamlin to his other arm, and with his burden completely shielded, presented his own right shoulder squarely to the muzzle of Hall's revolver.

"Gabriel Conroy, you are my prisoner," repeated the voice.

Gabriel did not move. But over his shoulder as a rest, dropped the long shining barrel of Jack's own favourite duelling pistol, and over it glanced the bright eye of its crippled owner. The issue was joined!

There was a deathlike silence.

"Go on!" said Jack, quietly. "Keep cool, Joe. For if you miss him, you're gone in; and hit or miss I've got you sure!"

The barrel of Hall's pistol wavered a moment, from physical weakness but not from fear. The great heart behind it, though broken, was undaunted.

"It's all right," said the voice fatefully. "It's all right, Jack! Ye'll kill me, I know! But ye can't help sayin' arter all that I did my duty to Calaveras as the sheriff, and 'specially to them twenty-five men ez elected me over Boggs! I ain't goin' to let ye pass. I've been on this yer hunt, up and down this caÑon all night. Hevin' no possy I reckon I've got to die yer in my tracks. All right! But ye'll git into thet waggon over my dead body, Jack—over my dead body, sure."

Even as he spoke these words he straightened himself to his full height—which was not much, I fear—and steadied himself by the tree, his weapon still advanced and pointing at Gabriel, but with such an evident and hopeless contrast between his determination and his evident inability to execute it, that his attitude impressed his audience less with its heroism than its half-pathetic absurdity.

Mr. Hamlin laughed. But even then he suddenly felt the grasp of Gabriel relax, found himself slipping to his companion's feet, and the next moment was deposited carefully but ignominiously on the ground by Gabriel, who strode quietly and composedly up to the muzzle of the sheriff's pistol.

"I am ready to go with ye, Mr. Hall," he said, gently, putting the pistol aside with a certain large indifferent wave of the hand, "ready to go with ye—now—at onct! But I've one little favour to ax ye. This yer pore young man, ez yur wounded, unbeknownst," he said, pointing to Hamlin, who was writhing and gritting his teeth in helpless rage and fury, "ez not to be tuk with me, nor for me! Thar ain't nothin' to be done to him. He hez been dragged inter this fight. But I'm ready to go with ye now, Mr. Hall, and am sorry you got into the troubil along o' me."