THE town bell had struck the hour, three clanging strokes, and even as their echoes lingered in the silence and the night, a candle blinked like a solitary eye in an upper window of Levi Tucker's red-brick tavern.

The night wind, an evil searching wind, that cut like a knife and chilled to the bone, swept both snow and rain in troubled gusts across the square; while the last quarter of an April moon gave a faint uncertain radiance. Smoke, illumined by a few flying sparks, which the wind promptly extinguished, issued from the tavern's kitchen chimney, and diffused itself low over the adjacent housetops. It seemed to bring with it certain domestic odours, as if a breakfast were being prepared, and so it was, the last which three members of the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company anticipated sitting down to in the town of Benson in many a long day.

The three wagons containing' the company's property stood before the tavern door, their white canvas covers tightly drawn; and Robert Dunlevy who, with young Walsh and Bingham, was to accompany the Landrays, was already busy in the stable putting their harness on the horses. He wondered why Bingham and Jim, Mr. Tucker's stableman, after promising over night to help him with the teams, had failed to appear; but evidently they had overslept themselves.

Across the yard in the inn he heard Mr. Tucker, his voice pitched in a most unusual key; but he was far too intent on his work to even pause to listen to what was passing there.

Presently, Jacob Benson and Bushrod Landray, well muffled in their great coats, hurried across the square; by the wagons they paused.

“This looks like business, don't it?” said Landray cheerfully.

“I guess we are the first,” remarked the lawyer, glancing about.

“No, Rogers is stirring; I saw a light in his room a moment ago. Let's go in; Tucker promised to have a breakfast for us.”

A few minutes later, when Stephen Landray pulled up before the tavern with Sam and the man who was to help back from Cincinnati with the horses and gear, he found that the teams were being led from the inn stable by Dunlevy and the tardy Bingham; they were whistling, “O, Susanna!” but they paused to hail him with boisterous good-will, and he returned their greeting with curt civility; their cheerfulness being the reverse of agreeable to him just then, for his thoughts were all of Virginia; each word and look of her's, each eloquent gesture, seemed to burn in his memory. To part from her had been so hard and cruel a thing to do, that his courage had almost failed him; and he had driven into town hoping, absurd as he knew the hope was, that something might have occurred to block the venture; and under his breath he cursed the implacable zeal of his teamsters, who were leaving nothing they desired not to leave, since no ties bound them to one spot of earth more than another. He would have welcomed with joy, a single day's delay; but that was not to be, and he looked about him with a feeling of utter helplessness.

Under the parted hood of one of the wagons, and holding a lantern between his knees, he saw the Californian with Benny at his side. Two spots of vivid colour burned on Rogers's hollow cheeks; his dark eyes were wondrously brilliant; a smile hovered about the corners of his mouth; he was knowing a foretaste of success. At last, out of talk and argument, endless considering and planning, out of the deluge of words that had preceded any actual doing, he had been able to get these men started. Seeing Stephen, he cried triumphantly:

“I'll show you California before you see this again, Mr. Landray!” and he swept the square with a fine free gesture.

“Is Bush here—and where is Walsh?” asked Stephen.

“Your brother's indoors, I haven't seen Walsh.”

“He hasn't come yet, Mr. Landray,” said Dunlevy, tightening a hame strap.

“Something's gone wrong with Tucker,” said Rogers, “but I didn't stay to see what it was. I'm off for California, and we don't climb down out of here until the first stage of the journey's done; do we, son?”

In the tavern, as he had intimated, all was confusion. Levi Tucker, powerfully excited, was stamping back and forth in front of his bar; while Landray and the lawyer were vainly seeking to calm him.

“Here's a pretty mess,” said the former as Stephen entered the room. “Tucker's wife seems to be missing.”

“Seems to be missing!” cried the innkeeper furiously. “I tell you, Bush, she's skipped clean out! Left me, do you hear? Left me! Well, I hope he'll trim the nonsense out of her—I do that!”

“What's this?” demanded Stephen, looking first from one to the other of the three men.

“He thinks Julia has run away,” said Benson quietly, but his face was rather white. Mrs. Tucker was his cousin.

“Thinks!” snorted the innkeeper contemptuously. “What sort of proofs may you be looking for, Jacob? Ain't I furnishing them by the cartloads? She's kin to you, and you don't want to think ill of her; but just hear me, all of you—”

“He's been drinking,” whispered Bushrod; but Tucker, whose senses appeared to be wonderfully acute all at once, heard him.

“Drinking!” he exploded, in a thin shriek of anguish. “Of course I been drinking. What was good, red licker made for if it wa'n'. for a time like this when you're publicly made a fool of by a trifling no-account woman, whose head never held an ounce of sense in all her born days! She's your cousin, Jake, I mind that, and my word! she's damn little credit to you—but she's worse shame to me.”

Stephen, with some difficulty, possessed himself of these facts. The night before, the faithful Jim had taken Mrs. Tucker out to her father's farm on the South Road. She had sent him back with the message that her father would drive her home when she should be ready to return. Midnight came, and she did not appear; Mr. Tucker, somewhat alarmed for her safety, dispatched Jim in quest of her. He had shortly returned with the information that Captain Gibbs had called at the farm early in the evening and had proposed driving her home, and they had ridden away together, behind a most excellent span of horses which the perfidious Gibbs had hired of Mr. Tucker. This was the last any one had seen of them.

The tavernkeeper told Stephen this between sobs, and oaths, and threats.

“Think of it, Steve—she's quit me for that infernal scalawag!”

“You are too willing to think ill of her, Tucker,” said Landray. “It may turn out all right, and then you will be the first to regret your haste.”

“Man, I know she's gone with him!” cried the tavernkeeper.

“Ain't he been hanging about here for days past, and all to get a word with her—I seen it!”

“Perhaps they've stopped somewhere on the way into town, they may have had a breakdown, or their horses may have run off,” suggested Benson.

“Run off? That team? No, sir! They have lit out together—damn her foolishness, and him just next door to nothing! I'll catch them yet, though! Jim! You Jim!” he bawled. The stableman appeared at the door.

“What do you want now, Tucker?” he asked.

“What I been wanting for the last half hour—a horse and fix!”

“That's what I'm trying to get for you, if you'd just leave off yelling for me,” said Jim.

But Tucker paid no heed to him, he was threatening again.

“When I catch up with them it will go hard with him! I'll learn him he can't run off with no wife of mine! You hear me? Him or me'll go down!”

“But you are sure of nothing yet,” interposed Stephen, shocked at the readiness he was displaying to think the worst of his wife.

“I've watched 'em together,” raged the wronged husband. “I've seen her blushing and giggling. They thought I didn't see; getting too old to notice or have good sense, I reckon; but I ain't been married three times not to know what a pair of fools look like when they are in love.” and he stormed back and forth in front of his bar. “I had good luck with all of my wives but her; they were perfect ladies, each of them, and to think she'd serve me a trick like this!” Then he calmed down. “You and Bush come into the sitting-room; and you too, Jacob.”

The three men silently followed him into the adjoining room, where he threw open the door of a cupboard, and fell to rumaging among its contents. Presently he brought to light two huge horse-pistols, relics of the War of 1812. As they were much too large to go into his pockets he wrapped them in a gaily-coloured quilt.

“I'll have satisfaction,” he remarked grimly. “I'll blow him as full of holes as he'll stick. They got my bay team and six hours start; but I'll be after them hot-footed with that fractious mare of mine, and when I come up with them it will be him or me.”

“I hope you'll not do anything hasty, Tucker,” said Stephen gravely.

“Don't you worry about me, Steve. The right's on my side.”

He seemed so weak despite his rage and brave boastings, and he had aged, too, in that single night, that Stephen, feeling only pity for him, rested his strong hand on his shoulder with a kindly pressure.

“Come, Tucker, why go after him at all?” he said.

“Thank'ee Steve,” cried the tavernkeeper in a husky voice, and his bleary eyes sought the handsome face of the younger man. “Thank'ee—but you can't keep me back. She's my wife, she's skipped out with another man, and now I'm going to make her skip back, and I reckon she'll do quite a little skipping one way and another before this affair's settled,” and he shook his head ominously.

Then he said:

“Them deeds covering the transfers of that land, and the distillery, are in Jake's hands. He can get 'em recorded. It's all right to leave it with him to close up the deal, ain't it, boys?”

“Yes, certainly. He will have to attend to it,” said Stephen.

Jim appeared at the door. “Well, Tucker, if you are going, look spry. The mare's hooked to the light fix.”

Mr. Tucker, who had been standing by the window with his head sunk on his breast, turned quickly, roused by his words.

“Thank'ee, Jim, I'm ready. You'll look after things until I get back?” and he gathered up the gaily-coloured quilt that hid the horse pistols. Jim seemed slightly crestfallen.

“Don't I go too, Tucker?” he asked. “You know when it comes to the madam you ain't no match for her. Don't you reckon you'll want me?”

“I'll attend to her. You do as you're told.” said the old man with a touch of unexpected dignity. He crossed the room to where the Lan-drays stood with Benson. “Good-bye, boys, and good luck to you!” he gave a tremulous hand to each in turn. “I'm mighty sorry to see you go.”

“And we are sorry to see you in this trouble,” said Stephen.

“I trust you'll not do anything hasty,” urged Benson.

“Well, I won't be too everlasting slow, Jacob,” said Tucker grimly. Then he followed Jim from the room. A moment later they heard him issue his final commands to his stableman, the crack of a whip, the clatter of four shod hoofs on the brick pavement, the rattle of wheels, and Mr. Tucker, his hat awry, and his two wisps of white hair streaming out behind his ears like a pair of cupid's wings, whirled out of the inn-yard, and down the street, the fractious mare at a wild gallop.

The three men looked from one to another in silence. Stephen spoke first.

“Do you think she's gone with Gibbs?” he asked.

“I shouldn't wonder, there's been a good deal of talk,” It was Benson who answered his question.

“We should not have allowed him to start off after them,” said Stephen.

“I imagine we would have had our hands full if we had tried to stop him,” responded Bushrod with a shrug. Here, Jasper Walsh entered the room.

“Let us be off, Mr. Landray,” he cried. He was a boyish-looking young fellow, with a refined and gentle face, that was now working piteously enough. A stranger in Benson, fresh from an eastern college, he had come west—bringing with him a young wife—to teach school and in his leisure time study law, but he had decided that a year or so in California would furnish him with the means to carry out his ambitions, and from the savings of his slender earnings he had purchased a few shares in the company. “They are waiting for us, they are all ready—can't we start?” he asked.

“Yes, I know, Walsh,” said Stephen, then he added, “See here, why don't you throw it over? I'll see that your interests are well looked to. Come, be sensible, and stay here with your wife.”

“No,” answered the boy determinedly. “It's my chance. It's best for her, and it's best for me that I go, and I've parted from her and the worst is over,” his lips quivered. “What's keeping us?” he asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” said Stephen, but he did not move. Bushrod laughed dismally.

“Walsh is right, let's start. I don't want to hang about here until Anna's awake, and sees us go past the house.”

Stephen looked at him in wonder.

“Until Anna's what?” he demanded sharply.

“Awake. Thank God, she was fast asleep when I left home.”

Stephen's glance dwelt sadly upon his brother for a brief instant, then he moved to the door and they passed out through the bar, where Jim had put out the lights and was already opening the heavy wooden shutters.

When they emerged upon the square, they found the wind had lulled. The rain was tailing in a quiet drizzle, with here and there an occasional snow-flake that melted the instant it touched the ground. Bushrod and Walsh said good-bye to the lawyer, and took their places in the wagons, while Stephen turned back for a last word.

“I'm leaving everything in your care, Jake,” he said, in a voice of stifled emotion, as he wrung Benson's hand.

“I understand, Landray. I'll do for her in everyway I can.”

“I know you will. God bless you, and good-bye.”

They passed down the silent street that echoed dismally to the beat of their horses' hoofs, they crossed the covered bridge and began the long ascent of Landray's Hill. As they neared the summit, the vapours lifted from the valley below them, and the first long level rays of the sun shot across it, just touching the woods that were its furthest boundary.

Stephen, who was driving the first wagon, leaned far out from under the canvas hood, for down in the valley he saw the dark bulk of the old stone mill; then the farm-house flanked by its great barns and lesser buildings, came into view; and, last of all, the white porch of his home, and on the porch a figure, that he knew had been waiting there since the day broke. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it frantically: there was an answering flutter of white, and then a turn in the road brought the leafless woods about him, and he had looked his last upon the valley.

As the sun swept higher in the heavens, and as the day advanced and the miles grew behind them, the drooping spirits of the party seemed to revive. Dunlevy and Bingham whistled or sang or chaffed poor Walsh who rode in their wagon; while Bushrod Landray and Rogers discussed the latest news from California, with an interest and cheerfulness that had been but temporarily eclipsed.