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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 42283
   :PG.Title: The San Rosario Ranch
   :PG.Released: 2013-03-09
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Maud Howe
   :DC.Title: The San Rosario Ranch
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1884
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE SAN ROSARIO RANCH
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      Cover

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      THE

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      SAN ROSARIO RANCH

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      BY
      MAUD HOWE

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      BOSTON
      ROBERTS BROTHERS
      1884 

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      *Copyright, 1884*,
      BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.

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      University Press:
      JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

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      TO
      My Beloved Sister,
      LAURA E. RICHARDS.

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.. _`CHAPTER I.`:

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   SAN ROSARIO RANCH.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   |  "Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet,
   |  Scatter the blossoms under her feet!"

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The house was a large square building, simple
and hospitable in appearance.  A wide
veranda ran about the four sides, heavily draped
by climbing roses and clematis.  There were
indisputable evidences that visitors were expected.
Old Tip, the dog, knew it as well as everybody
else about the house.  He had been routed out
from his favorite spot on the sunny side of the
piazza, by Ah Lam, who had given him a shower-bath
of water and soap-suds, because he did not
move away to make room for the scrubbing-brush
which the white-clad Celestial plied
vigorously.  From earliest morning the inhabitants
of the simple house had been busied in making
it ready.  The very kittens which played about
the steps of the piazza had licked an extra gloss
upon their shining coats in honor of the expected
guest.  Only Tip, the old hunting-dog, the spoiled
child of the household, showed no interest in what
was going on, and with a cynical growl trotted
off to the woods behind the house, where he
might sleep safe from all fear of interruption.

From the wide doorway, which stood hospitably
open, stepped a lady.  At the first sight of
Barbara Deering, strangers were always strongly
impressed with the indisputable fact that she
was above and before all else a lady.  A second
look,--and people were sure to take one,--and
it appeared that she was a young lady and a
beautiful one.  She was tall, above the height
of ordinary women, and her carriage was
remarkably erect and commanding.  She walked
with a quick, light step to the edge of the piazza,
and raising one hand to shade her eyes from
the rays of the setting sun, stood looking out
across the wide garden.  Her figure was like
that of a Greek Diana, muscular and graceful,
indicating great strength and endurance.  The
limbs were rounded but not languidly, as one
saw by the arm, from which the sleeve had
slipped back: it was white, firm, and hard.  Her
hands were large and shapely, the tips of the
fingers red, and the texture of the skin showed
that they were used to other work than that of
the broidery-frame.  Her head, with its crown
of pretty, curling flaxen hair, was habitually held
rather high, and her face wore an expression in
which a certain natural hauteur and imperiousness
seemed at war with a gentleness which was
more the result of education than a natural
trait.  The forehead was wide and unlined, the
eyes brown and clear, the nose straight, and the
mouth small and rosy.  The soft, white woollen
gown, with its breast-knot of red roses, suited the
young woman perfectly; and as she stood in the
sunset light, a spray of climbing rose hanging
overhead from the roof of the piazza, she made
an unconscious picture of grace and loveliness.

At the sound of a wagon on the driveway a
warm flush mantled her cheek and throat, and
stepping to the door of the house she called out
in a sweet, high voice, "Mamma, mamma! they
are coming!"

A moment later and a large open vehicle came
into sight, drawn by two swift mules, which
were urged forward by the driver, a young man
in whose face the traits of the girl on the piazza
were reproduced, but somewhat roughly.  On
the seat behind the driver was seen a female
figure closely enveloped in heavy travelling
wraps, her features concealed by a thick veil.
As the mules stopped before the entrance, the
young woman on the piazza came forward with
both hands outstretched, saying cordially but
half shyly,--

"Dear Millicent, welcome to San Rosario!
Are you very, very tired?  Let me help you out."

So saying, Barbara Deering almost lifted the
new arrival from the wagon, and with her strong
arm supported her to a chair.

"Thank you so much!" said the new-comer,
speaking with a slightly foreign accent, and
lifting her veil; "and you are Barbara?  I know you
from your picture, only you are much prettier."

"Poor child, you must be terribly tired; you
shall come and speak to mamma, and then you
must go directly to your room and lie down.
Hal, you will go down for Millicent's luggage?"

The young man nodded an assent, touched up
his steeds, and the wagon disappeared down the
red dusty road.  The two young girls entered
the house, Barbara leading the stranger to a
large room on the upper story.  In a low chair
sat a small woman, with a face which must have
once been beautiful, and which now shone with
an expression of simple sincerity and kindliness.
She held out her hand to Millicent, kissed her
on both cheeks, and warmly bade her welcome
to San Rosario.  Millicent Almsford acknowledged
the greeting with a courteous grace, and
immediately after accepted Barbara's offer to
show her to her room.

When the door was shut upon her, and she
was for the first time in many days alone, she
seated herself at the window, and leaning her
head upon her hand, remained wrapped in
thought.  She had travelled from the coast of
the Adriatic Sea to the shores of the Pacific
Ocean, with no companion save her maid and
her own painful thoughts.  And now the long
journeying was at an end, and she found herself
in the far West, in California, amidst her
kindred, all strangers to her save by tradition and
some slight correspondence.  She looked about
the strange room.  It was exquisitely neat and
fresh, with its clean whitewashed walls and new
blue Kidderminster carpet, its black-walnut
"bedroom set," and comfortable lounge, which
had been newly covered in her honor.  On the
bureau were blue and white mats and cushions,
a toilet-set which Barbara's busy fingers had
stolen time to make.

She marked all these little details, not one of
which escaped her eyes, even to the embroidered
towel-rack with her initials, and the worked
motto, "Welcome home."  Again she looked out
from the window over a wide pleasant orchard,
filled with heavily fruited peach and plum trees;
over a garden gay with bright-hued flowers, and
beyond to the everlasting hills which close
about the happy valley wherein stands the house
of the San Rosario Ranch.  Numbers of oxen
and cows were straying over the hills, with here
and there groups of sheep cropping the
sun-dried grass of the hills.

The landscape was a perfect symphony in
brown.  The round shiny hills were golden in
color; the warm-hued earth in the ploughed fields
and the meadows, whose crop of grass had long
since been mowed, was of a deeper tint.  The
house stood in an oasis of green.  A great hedge
of rose-trees blushing with red blossoms marked
the boundary of the flower-garden, irrigated with
great care through the long summer months.
The sun, low-hanging over the hilltops,
suddenly dropped from sight; and as the room grew
dim, Millicent shivered slightly, and turning
from the window threw herself on the couch
and lay there quite still, too tired even to weep
out the pain and homesickness in her heart.
A tap on the door was followed by the entrance
of one of her trunks, brought in by two strong
Chinamen, at whose coppery faces Millicent
stared curiously.  Six large boxes were placed
in a row and unstrapped by the younger
Chinaman, who, when he had completed his task,
approached the stranger land said in a
sympathetic voice, "Me solly you sick; Ah Lam bring
tea-cup?"  The white Celestial smiled
benignantly and vanished, quickly reappearing with
the promised cup of tea, which proved most
grateful to the girl's tired nerves.  The
creature's sympathy and attention brought tears to
her eyes; and when Barbara came in a few
minutes later, to help her in unpacking, she
found the traces of these tears on Millicent's cheeks.

"Do not try to dress for tea, dear; you are too
tired.  Where shall I find your dressing-case?
You must let me take the place of your maid,
now that she has left you so cruelly."

So talking pleasantly, Barbara unpacked the
guest's dressing-bag, looked admiringly at the
silver-topped bottles with "M. A." engraven upon
them, the ivory brushes, and all the dainty *et
ceteras* which were necessities to the foreign girl,
with the long white hands and finger-nails which
shone like pale pink conch-pearls.

"Thank you, if you would help me a little
to-night, I shall quickly learn to do for myself.  If
you will look in that largest trunk, you may give
me whatever gown lies at the top."

Barbara unfolded as she was bid a sea-green
cashmere dress, in which the stranger quickly
clad her slender figure.  Manifold strings of tiny
seed-pearls she wound about her white throat
and wrists, performing all the details of her
dressing with a careful precision which seemed part
of her nature.  The pink nails received an extra
polish, though the tea-bell had twice summoned
the inmates of the house to the evening repast.
With a peculiarly graceful motion, like the
undulation of a swift but quiet stream, she moved
about the room and finally down the stairway to
the dining-room below.

"Millicent, will you sit here, on my right?  Hal
shall have the pleasure of occupying the place
beside you."

The speaker was the lady whose gentle, firm
hand swayed the small realm of the San Rosario
Ranch during the long absence of its master,
Mr. Ralph Almsford.

Mr. Almsford had been a widower for the past
ten years.  On the death of his beloved wife,
her mother Mrs. Deering had continued at his
earnest request to make his house her home.
Her two younger children, Barbara and Henry
Deering, remembered no other home, and it
seemed but natural to them that they should
continue to live with their brother-in-law.  The
family life was a particularly happy one, and the
tie between Ralph Almsford and the Deerings
was closer than that which exists between many
blood relations.

The advent of the young heiress Millicent
Almsford, the half-sister of Ralph, was an event
of great importance in the household, and had
been eagerly anticipated by Mrs. Deering and
her daughter for several weeks.  Henry Deering--or
as he was always called Hal--displayed an
absolute indifference concerning the "strange
girl" who was coming to make her home among
them for a year.  What Ralph Almsford felt
about his guest no one of the household could
divine.  He was a quiet, reticent man, entirely
absorbed in his business, which of late had often
taken him from home for months at a time.  He
had written to his half-sister, urging her to visit
the ranch; and his letter, the first one of the kind
she had ever received, had so moved the girl that
she had telegraphed her departure, and forthwith
started on her long journey.

Her brother met her in San Francisco, where
they passed one day together,--a business
engagement calling him away on the morrow, as he
hoped for a few days only.

Millicent took the place assigned her by
Mrs. Deering, and supper was enlivened by
conversation about the journey she had just achieved,
which she described as the most terrible ordeal
that it was possible for a human being to
undergo.  The guest was entirely at her ease,
though her position might have been to many
people an embarrassing one.  Arriving alone in
a household of near connections, who were as yet
absolute strangers to her, and with whom it had
been decided that the next year of her life should
be passed, most girls in her place would have
experienced some sensation of awkwardness;
but Millicent was entirely mistress of the
situation.  She spoke principally to Hal Deering, a
jolly-looking fellow of twenty-five, who puzzled her
with the bits of dialect, perfectly unintelligible to
her, which he introduced into his conversation.

After supper Mrs. Deering led the way into
the drawing-room, saying to her guest,--

"Will you join us at prayers in the library,
Millicent?  Or would you prefer waiting here for us?"

"I see that you already know that I am an
unorthodox person, Mrs. Deering.  Frankly, I would
prefer not coming, if you will allow me.  Being
an agnostic, I should hardly be in sympathy
with your service.  If you will kindly excuse me,
I will await you here."

Millicent's refusal to join the family at their
devotions was accompanied with a smile so
exquisite and winning that the offence was
forgiven, although forgiveness had not been asked.
Hal, the great six-foot giant, more than forgave
the graceful girl her ungraciousness, and would
have a thousand times preferred remaining with
her to joining his mother and sister.

On being left to herself, Millicent moved to the
piano which stood open near the window, and
seating herself let her white fingers stray gently
over the keys.  Strange hands were Millicent's,
of a whiteness that made her pale cheek look
brown by comparison.  The fingers were long
and taper, at the tip of each a drop as of water
ready to fall from the pink digits.  The wrists
were round and very slender.  On the fifth
finger of the left hand she wore a strange, small
old ring of an Etruscan pattern, which had been
stripped from the fleshless hand of a princess,
whose sanctuary had been rifled by some
nineteenth-century robber of graves.  The setting
enclosed a small green intaglio exquisitely carved,
representing a Psyche with new-found wings.

She had a strange, white luminous face whose
beauty shone from within and lit the dark gray
eyes with a rare and tender loveliness.  The
large mouth was more exquisitely refined than
the mere rosebud tininess of Barbara Deering's.
The teeth were very white and perfect, and the
veil of soft, golden bronze hair, in which she
could have clothed herself like Mary in the
desert, was deftly massed into a great dusky knot
at the nape of her white neck.  Her arms and
bosom, veiled by half transparent draperies, were
white as marble from Carrara, and as finely yet
generously chiselled as those of a goddess of
Phidias.  She was very tall, though her grace
of movement concealed her height; her small
feet in their velvet sandals were not disproportionate
to her size.  Her features were beautiful,
and her hair and eyes the delight of every artist
who looked upon her.  And yet that which made
her so remarkable among women had nothing to
do with delicate contours or harmonious tints.
Her body seemed like a screen through which
shone a flame, at times white and gentle, again
rosy and passionate.  She was like the twin opals
which clasped her girdle, and was as sensitive
as they to every passing influence.

As the words of the ritual, grown to be meaningless
to him by their frequent repetition, fell
upon the ears of Henry Deering he heeded them
not, and failed to make the proper responses:
other sounds had struck his ear, and soft, solemn
strains of music made an under prayer to the
evening service.  To these strange chords his
heart made answer, and his thoughts were raised
by them far higher than was usual at that hour,
when it was their wont to run riot over the
business in hand for the next day.

As the family re-entered the drawing-room,
Millicent remained seated at the piano, now
striking louder chords, and finally ending the long
rhapsody with a brilliant waltz of Chopin.

"Thank you, dear," said Barbara, as Millicent
left the piano; "I am so glad that you are
musical.  I find very little sympathy for my music in
the family; we will have great pleasure in
practising together.  I have some very good four-hand
music."

Soon after, the newly arrived guest bade
good-night to the family, and went to her room
accompanied by Barbara.

"She is a little like Ralph," said Mrs. Deering,
"only infinitely handsomer.  How did she please
you, my son?"

"Is she handsome?  I hardly noticed.  It was
her voice that struck me; it has the sound of
laughing waters.  And can't she play, though!  I
never heard such music in my life."

"I am very glad for Barbara's sake that she is
musical," answered his mother.

"Yes; I hope that Barbara and Miss Almsford
*will* get on together.  But I have my doubts,"
said Hal, dubiously pulling his straw-colored
mustache.

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This is San Rosario to-day.  Shall we go back
a hundred years?  It has a history worth a word
or two.  To one who is familiar with the
beautiful country which lies about the old Mission of
San Rosario, it is not a little strange that the
place has as yet no prominence either in history
or literature.  Santa Barbara and the Mission
Dolores have been celebrated in prose and verse.
San Miguel and San Fernando Rey are not
forgotten; while San Rafael and San Francisco,
now grown to be important cities, will be
remembered as long as Plymouth or Manhattan.

The venerable President of the missions of
Upper California, Father Junipero Serra, founded
the San Rosario Mission in 1784, the last year
of his life.  It is possible that the judgment of
the enthusiastic priest was already failing when
he chose this site, for the Mission was never
prosperous, and was abandoned early in the
present century.  While standing among the
ruins of the old church, it is not difficult to see
in fancy a picturesque scene enacted on the
spot a century ago, on the morning of the
consecration of the Mission.

The little band of priests and soldiers have
come to the end of their journey; the pleasant
valley set in sheltering green hills has been
chosen for the site of the new Mission.  The
tall thin figure of Father Junipero first strikes
the eye.  In spite of his great age, and the
mortal disease with which he is afflicted, it is his
hand that tugs lustily at the rope which swings
the great bronze bell, hung in the arms of a
gigantic redwood.  It is he who shouts aloud
the summons, "Hear, hear! all ye Gentiles! come
to the holy Church!"  Close to the
President stand two priests,--one, a middle-aged man
with a head which indicates great power and a
dogged persistence; the other, a delicate looking
youth with the face of an enthusiast, beautiful
and dreamy.  The handful of soldiers who serve
the Fathers as an escort are making fast the
slight church tent which they have just set
up.  From the neighboring thicket the cries of
the startled birds mingle with the earnest tones
of Father Junipero and the deep notes of the
bronze bell.  Hardly less timorous than the
wood creatures are the Indians, who peer
cautiously from behind the great trees at the strange
spectacle before them.  They are invited to
draw near, and the bolder ones come close to
the black-robed figures, and stare curiously at
the simple ceremonials with which the ground
is consecrated to the service of the heavenly kingdom.

Through the indefatigable energy of the
President and the two priests, the few buildings of
the Mission were completed within a year.  The
adobe church was unusually large and well built,
as one can see to-day.  The tower, the base of
which is strongly fortified, is still standing,
though the roof of the church has long since
fallen to the earthen floor.  Little trace now
remains of the less important buildings, for the
Mission was abandoned thirty years after its
establishment, and the property passed into the
hands of its present owner, Mr. Ralph Almsford,
some fifteen years before the opening of our story.

A century has elapsed since that day when
the Fathers planted the cross amidst the stately
aisles of madrone trees; the Mission is now
almost forgotten, but the San Rosario Ranch is
well known for its famous breed of cattle, and
for its fine dairy, which supplies the San
Francisco market with choice butter and cream.

The two priests--he of the hard-favored
countenance, and he of the gentle eyes--lie side by
side at the foot of the crumbling altar.  The
Indians who were reclaimed by them from
barbarism have gone to their happy hunting-grounds,
and the brilliant future prophesied by Father
Junipero is proven to be a dream and nothing more.





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.. _`CHAPTER II.`:

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   CHAPTER II.

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..

   |  "Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
   |  No city airs or arts pass current here.
   |  Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth
   |  Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls."

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Millicent Almsford awoke early on the
morning after her arrival.  "What is the
matter?" she asked.

No one answering her question, she put another.

"Why do we not go on, what are we stopping
for?" this still in a semi-somnolent voice.  On
opening her eyes and finding that she was not in
the berth of the palace car, where she had for a
week past always found herself, she laughed
outright and then gave a deep sigh.

Her long journey, from the Palazzo Fortunio
in Venice to the San Rosario Ranch in California,
was at an end; and here she was, to use her
own phrase, "planted in the wilderness for a year
to come."

"Heavens! how can I bear it?" she cried, tossing
restlessly to the other side of her wide bed;
"it is all so new, so raw, so crude, so terrible,--just
like this cotton sheet, which has chafed my
chin so badly that I would rather have slept
without one."

Soon a loud bell broke the silence of the
morning.  Millicent did not heed it, but looked about
the room to find a means of summoning assistance.
Happily she found the bell quite near her,
and, after twice ringing, a tap at her door was
heard.  In answer to her "Come in," Ah Lam
opened the door cautiously.

"Missie call Ah Lam?"

"I want my breakfast now," said Millicent,
somewhat dismayed at the attendant she had
summoned.

Soon Barbara came, carrying the breakfast tray
in her strong arms.

"I am so sorry you don't feel well this
morning, Millicent.  What can I do for you?"

"But I feel perfectly well.  Do I look so badly?"

"No, dear; but we were afraid, not seeing you--"

"Dear Barbara, you must excuse my strange
foreign habits.  You know I have been only a
week in your country.  I did not realize that you
all came downstairs to breakfast.  What time is it?"

"After seven."

"And you have been up since--?"

"Since six o'clock only.  Hal is the early riser.
Half-past four sees him overlooking the milking."

Millicent shuddered; she had indeed come to a
strange land.

"I will try to learn the customs of your country,"
she said rather piteously, taking up her cup
of coffee.

"Only learn those that please you, dear.  As
for our early breakfast, which I see shocks you,
think no more about it.  I will gladly bring it
up to you every day."

"I shall unpack some of my boxes this morning,
Barbara; and later we will try some of your
duets, if you like."

The unpacking of her Penates gave Millicent
a certain satisfaction, which was, however,
tempered by the sad recollections they brought to
her mind, of her own apartment with its three
pretty rooms in the corner of the great Palazzo
Fortunio.

Millicent Almsford was the daughter of an
American gentleman who had lived in Venice
since before the birth of his daughter.  Here the
greater portion of her life had been spent, with
the interruption only of one long visit made to a
relative in England.

A month previous to the opening of our story
her father, widowed at her birth, had married for
the third time, his wife being a young and
uninteresting Italian woman of the middle class.
The marriage, to which Millicent was strongly
opposed, had led her to accept the invitation of
her half-brother to make him an extended visit
in his California home.

From the great cases she lifted, with the help
of Ah Lam, the household treasures which she
had been unwilling to leave behind, in the home
which knew her as its mistress no longer.  A
motley collection of articles had the great trunks
enclosed: pictures, books, a large Eastern carpet,
a parchment missal of the fifteenth century with
beautiful illuminations, a guitar, a little majolica
shrine with a figure of San Antonio very much
the worse for the journey, a set of delicately
wrought silken window and bed hangings of pale
sea color, a pair of heavy silver candelabra, with
a ponderous packet of wax tapers, and innumerable
other knick-knacks.

With the willing and ingenious assistance of
Ah Lam, this *roba*, to borrow the untranslatable
Italian phrase, was disposed about the large room.
The neat Nottingham lace curtains, at which
Millicent had looked askance, were now hidden
beneath the blue-green draperies, embroidered
by the hands of the mother whose face she had
never seen.  The pictures were hung upon the
walls, and a deep-hued Egyptian scarf disguised
the pasteboard motto, with its friendly welcome.
A book-case was improvised by the Chinaman
from some old boxes, and covered by Millicent,
who unhesitatingly cut to pieces a heavy woollen
gown whose color struck her as appropriate to
that end.  Beside the bed she hung the little
shrine of San Antonio, with much grief that the
long journey had damaged his saintly toes and
fingers.  On a table were ranged the candlesticks
and the missal, and an old copy of Dante
with a mouse-gnawed cover, and Lear's
"Nonsense Book,"--this last because it was an old
friend from childhood, which she, being a
creature of habit, had forgotten to discard.

The complete metamorphosis of the apartment
was a work of several days; and only when it
was entirely accomplished were Mrs. Deering
and her daughter admitted to see the change.
Poor Barbara!  All the pains and trouble she
had taken, all the careful stitches she had set,
were unavailing.  The new carpet she had bought
with her own pocket money was entirely covered
by old rugs, some of which were very faded and
worn; none of them were as bright and clean as
the Kidderminster.

The warm knitted afghan had disappeared from
the bed, which was covered by a white quilt
embroidered in strange floral designs.  The very
toilet set had been replaced, and the pretty
painted candles had been banished.

"I have made it a little like Venice," cried
Millicent excitedly, "only the walls in my
bedroom there are hung in silk and all painted in
water-color, and the rooms are so high,--you
remember the green room in the Palazzo
Fortunio, Mrs. Deering, with the nymphs, the sea gods,
and the green hobgoblins painted all over it?"

"Yes, indeed, Millicent.  What a change you
have wrought in the spare bedroom.  Ralph
would hardly recognize it.  I see now what was
contained in the boxes which so aroused Hal's
curiosity.  I am afraid you have made your room
too attractive, dear, and that we shall find
difficulty in coaxing you out of it into our more
prosaic apartments."

"Oh, I always live the greater part of my
life between my own four walls: I am not a
sociable person, I am afraid.  At least so Barbara
thinks."

Barbara said nothing; she was hurt and disappointed.
The room, with its strange furnishing,
was unnatural to her.  She felt, as she looked
at Millicent with this new setting which suited
her so perfectly, that neither in the room nor in
the life of Millicent Almsford was there a place
for her.  She had eagerly anticipated the advent
of this unknown girl, sisterless like herself, who
should grow to be so much to her, and in whom
she should find the sympathetic friend of whom
she had greatly felt the need; and now that she
had come, Barbara was bitterly disappointed.
Millicent was gracious, winning, full of attractive
qualities, intellectually sympathetic to a degree
which she had never before known.  And yet
the tall daughter of the Ranch was cruelly disturbed.

"I can be nothing to her; she is complete
without me," she had said to her mother; and herein
lay the reason for all her disappointment.
Living among people to whom her beauty, her talent,
and her warmth of heart had been the most
poetic features of their lives, Barbara Deering had
grown to value men and women according to the
amount of good or pleasure she could impart to
them.  Her life had been one wherein the tears
and sighs had been stifled, or hidden in the
darkness of her chamber; the laughter and smiles,
the bright cheery face, the helping hand always
meeting those about her.  Children loved her, and
old people blessed her for her sympathy and
kindness.  To her mother and brother she was
sun, moon, and stars; and to them every hour of
her life was consecrated.  Naturally endowed
with certain tastes which would have somewhat
interfered with the quiet plan of life laid out for
her, she had systematically neglected these gifts,
sacrificing herself to an imaginary duty which
was always before her eyes.  She had avoided
such pursuits as might have led her aside from
the common life of the family; and happiness for
her was found in the happiness she could afford
to others.  Enjoyment to her, unless her dear
ones were included in it, was something like a
sin; and the pleasure she took in her music gave
her pangs of conscience.

One morning, about a week after her arrival,
Millicent was awakened by the sharp sound of a
horse's hoofs clattering down the stony road
which led to the orchard from the hill behind the
house.  She sprang up, and throwing wide the
shutters, looked out to see whence the sound
came.  It was still very early.  The sun had not
yet clambered over the tops of the high hills; but
the sky was bright, and the shadows lay like a
misty garment over the happy valley, locked in
its circle of hills.  The great bull Jupiter, the
terror of the Ranch, stood near the house,
sniffing the cool morning air, and giving thunderous
snorts of pleasure.  The bars had been left down,
and he had gained access to the green orchard,
forbidden ground to him.  The hedge of roses
was hung with a wondrous garlanding of
dewdrops, and the dark-red lilies were just
awakening to the draught which the night winds had
distilled in their chalices.  From every blade
of grass and leaf of clover sparkled a diamond.
The fair valley had arrayed itself in jewels and
fragance for another day of light and love.

The sound of the horse's hoofs grew nearer;
and as Millicent looked expectantly along the
bridle-path that descends from the mountain,
there came into sight, parting the wet boughs of
the fruit trees, a horseman mounted on a gray
mustang.  The rider was a strong man, who sat
his steed with the air of one to the manner born.
He was dressed in corduroy breeches, high
top-boots, and flannel shirt.  He had no hat.  In his
belt shone a long hunting knife, and over his
shoulder was slung a rifle.  Before him on the
saddle lay a stag whose heavy antlers hardly
cleared the ground.

The first rays of the sun, just peeping over
the hill-tops, touched his thick brown hair, giving
it a glint of bronze, shone on the wide white
forehead, flashed into the eyes, and showed her for
an instant a stern profile, exceedingly beautiful.
Then she lost his face as he turned the corner
of the piazza.  Here he dismounted, and lifting
the deer from the horse laid it on the grass.
Perhaps the beauty of the dead creature struck
a chord of remorse in the breast of the hunter,
for he gave a sigh and turned it so that a gaping
wound in the neck was not visible.  Then
drawing a pencil and a bit of paper from his pocket,
he wrote something, and fastening the billet to
the horns of the deer, he mounted his horse, and
giving him the rein returned slowly by the same
road.  As he drew near again Millicent saw that
the mustache which hid the upper lip was
golden-brown, that the throat was white and shapely,
that the mouth smiled not untenderly, while the
eyes smiled not at all.  These details were noted
with an artist's love of beauty: and as she
watched him out of sight, she wondered with all
a woman's curiosity who he might be.

Since Millicent's arrival there had been many
visitors at the Ranch.  All the friends of the
Deering family who were within calling distance
had either come to make the acquaintance of
Miss Almsford, or had signified their intention
of shortly doing so.

Calling distance in California may be said to
extend not over fifty miles.  The neighbor who
lives half a hundred miles from you will make
a call, or in other words will come to pass the day.
Calling terms cease beyond these limits, and visits
of not less than twenty-four hours are exchanged.

In none of the people whom she had met had
Millicent felt or manifested the least interest.
She had received them graciously, but with a
cordiality of manner only.  Not one man or
woman among the circle of friends who were on
familiar terms at the Ranch awoke in her a
desire for further acquaintance.  But this one who
had called at six o'clock in the morning, and had
left his visiting card pinned to the antlers of a
stag, piqued the curiosity of the indifferent young
lady.  Wrapping herself in a soft gray woollen
dressing-gown, she ran downstairs in the liveliest
manner.

It was a splendid animal, fine as the buck
described by Browning in "Donald."  Alas, the
slender legs would carry his noble body and
stately head no further; the branching horns
would never again clash against the antlers of a
rival.  Millicent touched the beautiful dead
creature tenderly between the horns, and tried
to close the dim eyes.  At that moment she
heard a step upon the piazza, and Hal Deering
joined her.

"Why, Miss Almsford, what does this mean?
You to be up and dressed"--he hesitated,
"well, yes, you are dressed, and very becomingly
too; I like that loose gown--at six in the
morning! sighing over the fine piece of venison,
and performing the last kind offices of friendship
too.  Don't believe you would do as much for me."

The young man looked at the deer approvingly,
and perceiving the note, took it from the
antler and deliberately read it aloud:--

.. vspace:: 2

HONORED MISTRESS DEERING,--I lay myself
at your feet, and with myself a pretty bit of game
I have just killed, thinking that the fair Venetian
might fancy a venison steak for her breakfast.
I kiss your hand, dear my lady, and am your
most unworthy but loyal servitor,

.. class:: noindent

   JOHN GRAHAM.

.. vspace:: 2

"Of course, knew it was Graham, queer
creature.  Wonder why he did not stop and take
breakfast with us.  He is an unaccountable fellow."

"What did you call him?"

"Graham; his full name is John Douglass
Graham.  Just like a hero's in a novel.  But
Graham never does anything very heroic, I fancy."

"Shall you cut off his skin?"

"Whose?  Graham's?"

"How foolish, Mr. Deering.  I mean the
deer's fur."

"Oh no, certainly not; in America we always
serve game with the hide or feathers.  In fact,
we usually do not remove the wool from our
mutton; but knowing that you were accustomed
to seeing it dressed after the super-civilized
fashion of the Venetians, I have--"

"Mr. Deering, that is stupid.  I want his skin
and horns; please arrange them for me."

"Yes, Princess; your most humble servant
will obey your mandate."

He seized the creature by its slender legs,
hoisted it deftly to his shoulders, and
disappeared through the side door.  Millicent picked
up the bit of a note, smoothed it, and laid it
at Mrs. Deering's plate on the breakfast table.

Millicent asked Barbara later on in the day
who and what John Graham might be.  She was
told that the man with the bronze hair and
strange eyes was a near neighbor, and that she
would without doubt soon make his acquaintance.

With this answer Millicent was fain to be
content.  She thought about him all that day and
dreamed of him that night; the next morning
his face was not so distinctly in her mind, but
her thoughts were constantly busy with weaving
romances in which John Graham played a
conspicuous part.  The girl was indeed a creature
"of the stuff which dreams are made of;" the
web of her daily life, no matter how common-place
its actual experience might be, was rich
with her own vivid imaginings, like the gold
thread that a weaver twists through a sad-colored
fabric.

"Mr. Deering, take me to the dairy.  I have
not yet seen it," said Millicent one afternoon, as
they all sat together on the wide piazza, after
the early dinner.  The young man rose slowly,
his great length unfolding itself as he left his
chair; and for answer put down his pipe and
reached up for Millicent's hat, which he had
hung on a peg high above her reach.  The two
young people passed down the gravel walk
between the broad flower beds fragrant with the
wonderful roses which grow only upon the shores
of the Pacific.  A geranium tree twelve feet
high, with its great scarlet bunches, and the vine
of Maréchal roses which climbed up the piazza
and tapped with its heavy blossoms at her
casement, aroused Millicent's enthusiasm.

The dairy, Hal told her, was fully thirty years
old.  But her own palace had frowned grim and
black upon the Grand Canal before the passengers
on the good ship "Mayflower" had landed in
Plymouth.  The dairy was a plain, neat frame-building
painted white, looking out upon a great
farm-yard.  Here the pretty cows all stood
crowded together, waiting their turn to offer up
their evening tribute.  Two black-browed
Mexicans were milking, and a tall Yankee was
overseeing the straining of the milk.  He stood by
a large trough and received the brimming
buckets from the milkers, pouring their contents
through a strainer into the great receptacle.  In
the midst of the herd lay Jupiter, the splendid
bull, lazily chewing his cud and switching away
the sand flies with his thick black tail.

In a cool inner room were long shelves ranged
about the brick walls, whereon stood a shining
array of pans filled with milk in different stages.
Millicent was one of those people who are always
stimulated with a desire to accomplish whatever
other people are engaged in doing.  She now
announced her intention of learning to milk.
This suggestion was promptly vetoed by Hal,
who, to divert her attention, called to one of the
men to bring him the skimming utensils.  He
placed a large stone jar beneath the shelf, and
taking one of the milk pans which was covered
with a rich coating of yellow cream, proceeded
to skim it.  His only tool was a little wooden
wand, resembling a sculptor's modelling stick.
With this he separated the yellow disk of cream
from the sides of the pan, tipping it slightly so
that the whole mass of cream slipped off
unbroken, leaving the pale-blue skimmed milk in
the vessel.  Millicent was delighted with the
operation which Hal accomplished with such
skill, and after many unsuccessful attempts
finally performed the feat in a manner very
creditable to a beginner.

"If you will find your way back to the house,
Princess, I will help the men to finish the
milking," said young Deering, when Millicent had
announced her intention of returning.

She nodded her assent, and walking a few
steps stopped and leaned over the gate of the
farm-yard.  Presently Deering came out from
the dairy, having donned his rough overalls and
jersey, and, placing himself on a three-legged
stool, proceeded to milk a tall white cow.
Millicent looked at him musingly for a few minutes,
and then took her way down the path which led
to the house.  It was but a short distance, and
lay within sight of both farm and dwelling-house,
and yet she was somewhat astonished at the
young man's allowing her to return alone.  To
see him milking, too, at work with the common
laborers, had greatly perplexed her.  She cast
a glance over her shoulder to reassure herself
that it was really Hal's hatless head which was
bending forward, almost touching the side of the
white cow.  "And yet he is a gentleman," she
said aloud; and, remembering the white hands
of her papa and the gentlemen whom she had
known in the Old World, was reminded of the
truth, which when it is spoken seems a truism,
and yet which is often lost sight of, that the
proof of gentlehood lies neither in the skin of
the body, nor its raiment.

   |  Neither goodly clothes nor skin
   |  Show the gentleman within.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER III.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "And to watch you sink by the fireside now
   |  Back again, as you mutely sit
   |  Musing by fire-light, that great brow
   |  And the spirit-small hand propping it."

.. vspace:: 2

John Douglass Graham, by birth American,
by descent Scottish, by profession painter, sat
looking out from his tower window.  It was too
dark to paint, and not yet late enough for him to
light his study lamp and begin his evening work;
so he sat idle, a rare thing for him.  Before his
window there stretched a fair landscape; and a
man, a painter above other men, might well be
forgiven an hour's idleness in such a place.
The sun's last rays made the little copse look
more golden and dreamy than did the stronger
morning light.  The still pool with its warm
reflection of sky and trees, the mysterious dark
wood beyond, all shadowy and full of dreams,
made a picture which his hand never wearied of
reproducing.  On his easel stood a canvas which
bore a reflection of the scene on which he was
looking, painted in a strong, masterly manner,
but not yet completed.  "Ah, Heavens! no
wonder that men love to paint in cities, with nothing
of nature's beauty before them to shame their
work.  If I dwelt face to face with a brick wall
and saw no motion save that of horse-cars and
over-laden dray horses I might be more satisfied
with what I accomplish.  This picture might
then seem beautiful to me.  It is a different
thing to look into the face of the great model
and then at one's work.  Only the strongest of
us can do that, only our Duprés and Rousseaus.
Shall I ever feel that I can even dimly picture
this one view?  Can I ever send my testimony
of beauty to the world?  Can I say the one word
of truth which was given me to speak?"

Graham spoke to the four walls to which most
of his conversation was addressed.  The only
sympathy he ever received in his bursts of
enthusiasm or despair was from a portrait which
hung where the first rays of light fell upon it in
the morning.  It was the portrait of a woman
neither young nor beautiful with the beauty of
youth.  A tender, sad face, with those heavy
lines at the mouth and nose which tell of grief
and long weeping.  The gray hair was smoothly
brushed from the forehead, and the whole mien
and costume showed that dignity of age so
rarely seen in these days when grandmothers
dress in rainbow-hued garments fit for their
grandchildren, curl and frizzle their locks after
the mode worn by the reigning beauty of the
time, and in every possible way simulate a youth
whose charm they have not, thus losing the real
grace which belongs to their age.  Before his
mother's portrait the artist always kept fresh
flowers, and to that dear and noble face his eyes
were turned in a mute appeal for sympathy
many times during the long solitary day.

The fires in the western sky burned low and
finally faded out before Graham rose from his seat
near the window and touched his lamp into flame.
The searching light of the large astral revealed
clearly the interior of the apartment in which
the artist lived and worked.  It was a square,
high room, not very large, with a miscellaneous
furnishing.  One corner, half hidden by a large
canvas, was devoted to his narrow wooden bed
and dressing-table.  Near a large casement stood
his easel with palette and brushes.  On the walls
hung a pair of foils and masks and some boxing
gloves.  These, and a pair of Indian clubs in the
corner, proved that the occupant of the tower
was not careless of developing the splendid
muscles with which he was endowed.  Near the
doorway hung a string of curious Japanese
*netshukés*,--masks, monkeys, bears, men, women,
and fruit, carefully carved in wood or ivory by the
greatest artificers the world knows to-day.  The
walls were covered with pictures and sketches;
the large table littered with books and tubes of
paint.  A group of deer antlers served as
clothes-pegs, and the floor was strewn with the skins of
these and many other animals.  A quaint
apartment, in which no attempts at the picturesque
had been made, which the careless grouping
together of many objects had nevertheless attained.

John Graham had reclaimed the old tower
from utter desolation two years before, when he
took up his residence in the ruins of the
Spanish Mission.  The adobe building had fallen to
decay, a thick cloak of ivy and flowering vines
mercifully hiding from the light of day the
desolate ruin of what had been the religious centre
of the country of San Rosario.  The church
walls had fallen to the ground; but the reredos
and deserted altar stood swept by the winds of
heaven, and decked with climbing roses and
clinging ferns.  The tower, which had been built
very substantially, and with a view to defence in
case of danger, still stood stanch, gray and
weather-beaten.  A flight of steep wooden stairs
leading from what had been the vestibule of the
church gave access to the room.

The tower stood within the limits of the San
Rosario Ranch, the property of Mr. Ralph
Almsford, which included twenty square miles of
wooded country and arable land.

When Graham had asked permission to establish
himself in the old tower, Mr. Almsford had
readily granted the request, thinking, however,
that he would weary of the solitary life in a few
weeks.  Two years had now passed, and the
artist still inhabited his little eyrie, whose
possession he disputed with the night owls which
had been wont to sit blinking in the tower
through the long hours of daylight.  The place
was five miles distant from the Deering house,
and Graham's only neighbor was an old wood-cutter
who lived in a cabin hard by, and who went
by the name of French John.  He prepared the
artist's meals and took charge of his room.
French John was a strange, silent old creature,
whose life had been a varied one.  He had
served in the French army first as a soldier,
then as an officer's servant.  His reminiscences,
when he could be induced to tell them, were full
of interest.  He had been in Paris in '48; his
hands had helped to tear up the pavement to
make the blockades and barriers.  He had served
in Algiers, whence he had come to America,
and gone as a private to the war of the Southern
Rebellion.  He had finally drifted out to the
San Rosario Ranch, where he would in all
probability pass the remainder of his days.  For
some reason he had received no pension from
either of the governments for the support of
which he had shed his blood.  In his old age
this stranded bit of humanity was forced to
support himself by the hard labor of a wood-cutter.
His little cabin was built behind the altar, where
the Lady Chapel had once stood, sheltered from
the winds by the high screen of the reredos.

It was to the humble dwelling of French
John that Graham proceeded after having made
a toilet with unusual care.  The door of the
little log hut was ajar; and as he approached, the
interior was entirely visible, revealed by the
uncertain light of the wood-fire.  The old man
was stooping over the blaze with a saucepan in
his hand, the contents of which he was vigorously
stirring.  Three cats of preternaturally grave
aspect sat nearby, intently watching the culinary
preparations.  A mangy old hunting dog lay
snoring in the corner, gray and scarred as his
master.  A battered fowling-piece and a greasy
game-bag were flung on the wooden bench which
served as table and chair to the occupant of the
humble dwelling.  The young man paused a
moment on the threshold and sighed.  The
unkempt little cot with its lonely owner only
differed in degree from his own tower, from himself.
He had not even the companionship of the
dumb beasts.  When he should grow as old and
battered as the wrinkled wood-cutter, would he
be dependent for sympathy on a purring cat, or
an old dog?  Presently he spoke, but it was in
a loud, cheery voice which in nowise indicated
the sombre thought which had just suggested
itself to his mind.

"Good-evening, John.  What luck did you
have to-day?"

"Four quail and two rabbits," replied the old
man laconically, without returning the greeting
of his visitor.

"And what have you in that old iron pot
of yours?  Something very good, I warrant."

"Stewed quail with bacon."

"Well, you must eat it yourself, for I do not
want any supper to-night; I am going up to
the house to pass the evening.  Here is a
package of tobacco for you.  I shall be ready at the
usual time for my breakfast."

The old man nodded his thanks for the
present; and Graham left the hut, and proceeded to
the spot where his horse was tethered.  He
saddled and mounted the mustang, and rode
swiftly down the narrow path.  Old John
watched from his doorway the movements of
the young man, and when he had disappeared,
sat down to his solitary meal.  The brief
glimpses of Graham and his many kindly acts
were the only human influences which touched
the life of poor old French John.  His dealings
with Hal Deering were rare; once in a month
the young man visited his cot, overlooked the
work he had been engaged upon, and paid him
his wages.  For the occasional gifts of tobacco
and wine, the chance newspaper from Paris,
which were the only events of importance in the
dull routine of his life, he was indebted to
Graham.  He gave no expression to his gratitude,
and would have been sorely puzzled to do so.
But the artist was none the less aware of it; and
some portion of the packages which occasionally
came to the tower from San Francisco never
failed to find their way to the hut of the wood-cutter.

As Graham rode up the gravel path which
led to the house, he caught a glimpse of a tall,
slender figure swaying out from the gloom of
the piazza.  A white, bare arm was stretched
upward to pluck a bunch of roses from a vine
twisted about the porch.  Thus much he saw and
nothing more, as he fastened his horse and
mounted to the piazza, which had suddenly
become tenantless.  The house door stood
hospitably open, and the young man entered the
hall and passed into the library.  The soft
candle-light showed him the room and its one
occupant, the woman whom he had seen dimly amid
the climbing roses an instant before.  Evidently
she had not known that the hoof-beats on the
road were bringing a guest; for she was kneeling
upon the hearth, her graceful shoulders bent,
her strong white arms steadily working a pair of
bellows.  The total depravity of inanimate things
is never more clearly seen than in the case of a
wood-fire that refuses to burn.  The girl, after
several unavailing efforts to rouse a flame from
the smouldering mass of embers, deliberately
took the fire to pieces and rebuilt it after
another fashion, putting a handful of pine cones
atop of the logs, and setting them alight with a
roll of paper.  At last she succeeded in starting
the blaze, and, stretching her graceful length
upon the deerskin rug, she rested her elbows on
the low bench before the fender, and lay quite
silent, her face supported by her hands, her dark
eyes looking into the fire.

John Graham, who had watched from the
doorway every movement of the unconscious
young woman with the pleasure of an artist in
all things which are graceful and beautiful, still
stood silent, giving no sign of his presence.
The warm, pleasant interior, with its comfortable
easy chairs and sofas, its open piano, near which
stood a work-basket, its shelves of books and
vases of flowers, bore all the infallible indications
which mark the inmost shrine of domestic life.
This was a room where the members of the
household lived.  Here was a home, the centre
of affection and hospitality.  The shadow of the
lonely old man and his desolate dwelling rose
for a moment before his eyes, and at that
thought he stepped forward as if irresistibly
drawn toward the cheerful hearth and the
graceful woman whose eyes were lighted by the
dancing flames.  There was a tender look about his
mouth, usually so stern in expression, as he
came forward into the firelight with an expectant
countenance, as if he were about to meet an old
friend.  Hearing the footsteps, the girl without
turning her head said,--

"Well, Barbara, here you see me, making myself
comfortable on Graham's deerskin.  It has
just come home; is it not a beauty?"

Receiving no answer, Miss Millicent Almsford
turned her face so that her eyes fell upon John
Graham standing near her, with a smile on his
lips, a flush on his cheek.  Was it the sudden
leaping of the fire from the heart of the great
apple log, John Graham asked himself, or was
it the shining of a flame from within that lighted
Millicent's face with a strange radiance at the
instant when her eyes met his own?  For an
instant, a space of time too short to be counted
by seconds, for something less than one quickened
heartbeat, they looked at each other, these
two, the woman with his name still on her lips,
the man drawn toward the warm fireside by an
uncontrollable desire to take his place in the
picture, to remain no longer an outsider, a
looker-on.  One instant, and then habit,
ceremony, the second nature of both, asserted itself,
and each shrank back from that too intimate
glance; the girl rising slowly to her feet, the
man making a ceremonious bow.

"I beg your pardon for disturbing you, Miss
Almsford; but I found the door open, and I am
allowed the privilege of making myself at home
at San Rosario.  As there is no one here to
introduce me, will you allow me to name myself as
your most humble servitor, John Graham?  I am
vain enough to hope that my name is not quite
unknown to you.  Hal has perhaps spoken of me."

"Indeed, yes, they have all mentioned you
frequently.  Mrs. Deering and Barbara have not
yet returned from the station.  When you came
in I thought they had returned.  I think the train
must be late; they drove down to meet a friend.
Will you not be seated, Mr. Graham?"

Millicent had by this time quite recovered her
equanimity, somewhat shaken by the sudden
appearance of the man who had lived so
persistently in her thoughts for the past fortnight.
She seated herself near the fire, motioning
Graham to a chair on the other side.

"I suppose that this fire quite shocks you?
Mr. Deering cannot bear to sit in the same room
with it; but I have suffered so much from the
change of climate that I am allowed to have this
little blaze every evening.  Do you see this pretty
rug?  It only came home to-day.  Mr. Deering
had it dressed for me.  It is from the deer which
you brought here one morning,--a beautiful, soft
piece of fur."

"Yes, it is well arranged too.  Did I
understand you, Miss Almsford, to say that Miss
Deering had gone to meet some visitors?"

"Yes, but you need not mind,"--her quick ear
had caught the shade of annoyance in his
voice,--"it is only poor Ferrara."

"Poor Ferrara?  Ah, I see you have already
guessed his secret."

"Who could help it when it was so very evident?
Do you think Barbara will ever say yes?"

"I cannot tell.  I sometimes hope so, but she
is over-fastidious."

"Fastidious?  Is that the term to use?  Surely
you would not have her marry him unless she
loved him?  To a woman like Barbara such a
fate would be intolerable."

"I do not quite agree with you.  You know
that self-sacrifice is Miss Deering's greatest idea
of happiness."

"I cannot comprehend it; truly I think I do
not understand Barbara, though I do
appreciate her and admire her.  They have been
expecting a visit from you for some time.
Mr. Deering said he should ride over to your tower
and look you up to-morrow."

"I have been very much occupied of late, or
I should have paid my respects to you before
this time.  If you have heard anything about
me, you must have heard that I am an undependable
person, and never do the things which people
expect of me.  Besides, I am a hard-working
creature, and not of the butterfly genus of man like
our good Ferrara.  Tell me a little how this new
country strikes you.  What a change it must
be, this sudden transplantation from Venice to
California!"

"I have suffered terribly.  Ah!  Mr. Graham,
you who have known my Venice can feel for me.
None of them here can understand it.  I feel
like a plant which has been torn suddenly from
a garden beautiful with flowers and sunshine,
gentle showers and happy birds, and placed with
its roots all torn and bleeding on a barren
mountain-side, with no flowers near it, only sturdy,
useful herbs, which neither shrivel in the terrible
sun, nor wither in the keen mountain winds.  But
*I* fade and die.  There is no room for me in this
great New World, where all are so busy and have
so much work to do.  The few beauties which
they have, their blue skies and grand hills, they
neither understand nor love.  They have no time
to look back into the glorious past with its
memories; they know not how to seize the present
with its actualities; they live and toil ever for the
future, which they will not live to see.  I have
nought in common with them.  I belong to the
land of my birth, where the present is beautiful
with the splendors of the past.  What are my
books, my studies, to these people?  Nothing.
They tolerate my eccentricity; they listen
patronizingly to the tales of what has been; but
they bemoan my wasted time, and would fain teach
me to throw away my embroidery needle and
learn to use their horrible sewing-machines.
My music is my saving grace, but they approve
of it more than they enjoy it."

Millicent spoke rapidly and with shining eyes.
She had at last found a soul which, if not kindred
to her own, was at least capable of an intelligent
sympathy.

"It is not strange that you should feel as you
do; and, believe me, I can sympathize with you;
and yet, do not be hurt if I tell you that this very
transplanting is the thing which you needed.  Do
you know how the finest peaches are produced?
To borrow another simile from nature, it is by
taking a slip from an old tree and grafting it to
the sturdy trunk of a young fruit tree, that the
most perfect fruit is obtained.  Be not afraid;
the wound will heal; and the strong, vigorous
sap of the young tree will make the blossom,
which now droops, bloom as a rare fruit."

"I do not want it.  I do not belong here.  I
have no part, no sympathy with it," she said
rebelliously.  "I hate it, this land, where you all
strive for money, not for art, and where fame is
measured out with ingots for weights."

"When I was in Venice," said Graham, "there
was with me a fellow artist, a student like
myself.  We took our first trip through the Grand
Canal together.  I remember his first criticism.
Shall I tell it to you?  It was this: 'How terrible
to see cabbage leaves floating on the Grand
Canal!'  It was the feature which first struck him.
For years after he lived in the wonderful city,
loving it better, painting it more truly, day by day.
He has long since forgotten the cabbage leaves
which at first annoyed his nice English taste.
Believe me, you will find, above and beneath
the things which now jar and shock your nerves,
much that is grand in this country which you
will one day be proud to call your own."

"Never, never!" she cried impetuously.

At this moment voices sounded in the hall,
and several persons entered the library.  These
were Barbara and her mother, Hal Deering, and
a short gentleman with a very large round head,
on which the coarse black hair, closely cropped,
stood straight in air, like the hobbed mane of a
Mexican pony.  His piercing black eyes were
set too close to the well-shaped aquiline nose;
and the black mustache curled fiercely from
the upper lip, revealing a good mouth set with
strong white teeth.  His forehead was deeply
seared with lines which betokened frequent
frowns, but the wrinkles about the mouth looked
as if it might be in the habit of laughing
constantly.  A good olive complexion made the face
not ill-looking, while the small, well-modelled
hands and feet redeemed the rather unwieldy
little body from absolute ugliness.  On seeing
Graham, the new-comer frowned fiercely and
twisted his mustache upward in an irritated
manner.  When the artist stepped forward so that
the light from the lamp fell on his face, the irate
expression died from the countenance of the
little gentleman; and, with a fat, good-natured
laugh, he shook him warmly by the hand,
turning his mustachios downward so that they
resembled drooping commas.  This act altered the
expression of his countenance to an extraordinary
degree, half its ferocity having disappeared with
the tight upward twist of the mustache.

By some coincidence or providence this had
been a red-letter day in the lives of several in
the party.  The morning mail had brought
young Deering the welcome news that his
favorite pair of oxen had taken a prize at a
cattle-show the day before.  The gentle mother had
received a letter by the same mail from her
wandering son-in-law, Ralph Almsford, full of
affection and promising a speedy return to the
Ranch.  Ferrara was greatly elated by Barbara's
having driven down to the station to meet him;
and Millicent seemed, for the first time since her
arrival at the Ranch, to be thoroughly alive and
awake.  Her pale cheek was softly flushed, the
color shining through the luminous skin like the
fire of an opal seen beneath its milky veil.  Her
eyes, usually deep and earnest, but without great
animation, were lit by a flame which was not
reflected from the firelight.  Barbara was happy
because those about her were so.  Her musical
little laugh was not mechanical to-night; she
was really in good spirits and in no need of
feigning them.  Graham's rather frozen
existence seemed to be melted by the genial
company; and the evening passed by with that
lightning rapidity unknown in social gatherings,
no matter how magnificently they be appointed,
where the spirit of cordiality and good-fellowship
is lacking.  Music was not wanting to complete
the jollity.  Ferrara sang some delightful
Spanish songs with more animation than voice; and,
to the astonishment of the company, Millicent,
who until that moment had not sung a note, at
Graham's request seated herself at the piano,
and sang, with a voice of rare beauty and power,
ballads tender and war-songs gay, old Italian
music of masters long forgotten.

"Sweet Mistress Deering, will you not give
us some music?" asked Graham, as Millicent
left the piano.

"After such singing as Millicent's and Mr. Ferrara's,
my little thread of a voice could hardly
be heard, Graham."

"Play for us then, my lady.  Miss Barbara,
are you not in the mood for a dance?"

"Of course she is," said Hal, "and so is
Ferrara.  Come, Princess, I will give you your
first lesson in the American waltz."

The young men rolled back the huge rugs,
leaving the hard-wood floor exposed.  Mrs. Deering
placed herself at the piano and struck up a
little old-fashioned waltz which she had learned
in her youth, and Millicent was whirled off her
feet by her energetic partner.  Not till she had
danced twice with Deering and Ferrara, did
Graham claim her hand for a waltz; and not till
Mrs. Deering struck the last chords of the music
did he loose her waist from his circling arm.
Then a stroll on the piazza was proposed, and it
was not till the last stroke of twelve warned
them that the new day had begun that the party
broke up.  Barbara and Millicent stood together
watching for Hal, who had gone to fetch
Graham's horse, when the artist joined them on the
piazza and bade them good-night.  Millicent,
with her foreign breeding, never had conformed
to the American habit of hand-shaking, but
when Graham wished her good-night she
instinctively and unconsciously gave him her
hand.  He held it possibly a half second longer
than was necessary, and then sprang on his
horse.  As he rode down the dark path, he
turned in his saddle and took a last look at the
house.  Barbara had gone indoors; one figure
alone stood beneath the rose-vine with bare white
arms, the figure he had seen on his arrival
earlier in the evening.

"Good-night to you," he cried.  The deep,
musical tones were answered by a farewell
greeting from the girl who stood there alone
in the night watching his retreating form.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Then, in the boyhood of the year,
   |  Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
   |  Rode through the coverts of the deer
   |  With blissful treble ringing clear;
   |  She seemed a part of joyous Spring."

.. vspace:: 2

Though the greater part of his time was spent
in the old tower, John Graham was well known
in San Francisco.  His studio, at the top of a
tall apartment-house in one of the unfrequented
thoroughfares of the city, was familiar to most
of its aspirants to artistic fame.  In this large
bare room, with its strong north light, there
assembled every morning a dozen young men
who were busily engaged in cast drawing and
model painting.  To the instruction of these
youths two days of the week were devoted by
the artist, whose only recompense was in the
gratitude of his scholars.  One morning not
long after his meeting with Miss Almsford,
John Graham might have been seen carefully
examining his pupils' work, giving a word of
advice here, a criticism there, and a hearty
encouragement to all.  On his return from
Paris he had opened his studio to all those who
were desirous of studying art.  The first year
he had had but three students; at the end of the
second year the number had quadrupled.  On
the morning in question Graham had arrived
with a new model,--a rough-looking fellow whom
he had met in the street, and induced to
accompany him to the studio.  On a platform at
the end of the room stood the stalwart model;
while the artist, standing beside him, gave an
off-hand lecture on anatomy, the students sketched
the man or took notes of what their master was
saying.  It was not Graham's habit to do any
work at the studio; but this morning, after he
had finished his discourse, he placed himself at
a vacant easel, and with a strong, bold hand made
a free drawing of the superbly modelled figure.
As he worked he forgot his class, his lecture,
everything but the canvas before him and the
subject he was studying.  As the sketch grew
beneath his hand the scholars one by one
forsook their work, and stood watching him silently.
The perfect confidence with which he worked--never
hesitating, never altering what was already
done--was fascinating to the younger men;
and even the sculptor, Arthur Northcote, who
inhabited the adjoining studio, stopped on his
way upstairs and joined the group behind his
chair.  When the model declared himself unable
longer to maintain the pose in which he had
been placed, Graham threw down his brush with
a sigh, saying,--

"Well, Horton, you may go now if you must,
but do not fail to come to-morrow.  I have your
name correctly,--Daniel Horton?  Where do
you live?"

The stranger declined to give his address, and
promised to come the next day at the appointed
hour.  After he had left the room the artist had
something to say about expression, characterizing
the face of the model as one indicative of
brutal cunning and impudent daring.

As Graham quitted the studio the young sculptor
joined him, and they walked together toward
the station.  Northcote was a slender, delicately
built man some years Graham's junior.  His
face was instinct with the poetry of art, but was
lacking in force.  By the side of Graham's strong,
resolute countenance his delicate features
appeared weak and effeminate.  The younger man
took his friend's arm, as if relying on him for
physical as well as moral support, and said as
they walked along,--

"Graham, where did you pick up that model
this morning?"

"I found him lounging about the station.
Why do you ask?"

"He has such a bad face.  You should be
more careful about the men you engage to pose
for you."

"And why, Arthur?"

"Because you lead such an unprotected life
in that terrible old ruin."

"What a fanciful creature you are, Northcote.
As if there was anything to be gained in
molesting a beggarly artist in an inaccessible
fortress.  You have never seen my tower, or you
would not think that it would be an attractive
spot to thieves."

"Did you not hear," continued Northcote, "of
that case of abduction in Cathgate County last
week?  A man was carried off by a pair of
brigands, and kept for a week until a large sum of
money was paid for his ransom."

"What manner of man was he?"

"The president of the county bank."

"Well, my dear Arthur, when I become a bank
president, or even a railroad treasurer, I will take
better care of my worthless self.  At present I
am not a promising prize to the most sanguine
kidnapper.  I can fancy your feelings on receiving
a notice that, unless five thousand dollars be left
in the hollow of a blasted pine-tree on the
high-road at San Rosario, a slice of my right ear
would be forwarded by way of a reminder!
When are you coming out to pass the night with me?"

"When I have sold my Diana, or when Patrick
Shallop gives me an order for a life-size statue
of himself."

"Come with me to-day.  It will do you good
to pass an afternoon in the woods."

"Do not ask me.  I will take nothing more
from you, Graham,--I cannot,--not even a piece
of bread, until--"

"Well, if you are so obstinate, farewell to you.
I must hurry or I shall miss my train."

The two men shook hands the sculptor turning
into a dingy restaurant, the artist walking
rapidly in the direction of the railroad station.
Arthur Northcote made a light repast,--for he
was poorer than usual that day,--and soon
returned to his studio, whose rental was defrayed
by his friend's slender purse.

Graham caught his train, and reached San
Rosario at about three o'clock.  He found his horse
at the station, and rode toward the house.  At a
distant point he caught a glimpse of two figures
on the piazza, which he recognized as those of
Miss Almsford and Hal Deering, who were talking
together, quite unconscious of his approach.

"So you like Graham?"  Henry Deering was the speaker.

"Of course I like him.  I told you I should,
from the moment you described his queer tower
and his solitary life to me.  I always like people
who have something to characterize them and
set them apart from the mere dead-level rank
and file of mediocrity," answered Millicent.

"But may not a hermit like Graham be
mediocre like everybody else?"

"No, the fact of his living alone does not
make him interesting; but he would not live
alone if he were like everybody else.  Ordinary
people all herd together."

"You must find all of us very ordinary people,
I should think, after the people you have lived
among,--romantic Italians and that sort?"

"But Italians are by no means all interesting.
The great charm about them is that they are
usually a happy people, and that it does not take so
much to make them contented as it does you
more complex Americans."

"*You* Americans?  How soon are you going to
call yourself an American?  But you do not
answer my question.  How can you manage to get
on as well as you do with commonplace people
like ourselves?"

"*You* are not commonplace.  A man who
knows how to milk cows and digs potatoes, who
rubs down his own horse and feeds his stock,
and can withal dance like a city beau, and keep
a table full of people laughing from the soup to
the coffee, cannot be called commonplace."

"Thank you, Princess, most heartily for the
compliment.  I see you will not be pinned down
by my rather personal question.  Let me pay
you with some of your own coin.  I think it
quite remarkable that you have so quickly fitted
into the life here, and have accepted so quietly
things which must be very strange to you.  The
difference of the way of living, the surroundings,
the very strangeness of being waited on by these
Chinamen, must be very uncomfortable, I fear?"

"Do not suggest a word against Ah Lam; he
is the most delightful servant I have ever seen.
Our Italian domestics are like great children,
who have to be humored and managed with the
extreme of tact and care.  Ah Lam is like
nothing but one of the automata described by Bulwer
in 'The Coming Race,' which stand motionless
against the wall until roused to action by the
vrill wand, when they promptly perform the duty
in hand.  Ah Lam is only mechanical as far as
regularity goes, for he has feelings and deep
sentiments beneath his calm exterior.  Do you
know that he brings me fresh roses every
morning, and that when he returned from San
Francisco yesterday he brought me a present?"

"They all do that; they are the most generous
creatures in the world.  What did Lam bring you?"

"The prettiest little China silk handkerchief,
which he presented with these words: 'I solly
got no more, I *so* poor.'  Was it not touching?"

"How do your lessons get on?"

"Very well.  Lam learns ten or twelve new
words every day.  I give him the English word
for an article, and he gives me the Chinese; and
the following day we catechise each other; but
I have never remembered a Chinese name, and
Lam has never forgotten an English one.  Then
I set him copies, which he writes out beautifully
with his queer little camel's-hair brush dipped
in India-ink.  I fear the sentiments will not
greatly benefit him, but I try to explain them
to him."

"Give me an example of your copy-book maxims;
I am sure they are something new, quite
unlike those I was brought up on."

"I take my verses all from Mr. Lear's
'Nonsense Book;' they will help him geographically,
if not otherwise."

"You have given him the 'Old Man of Moldavia'?"

"Assuredly."

"Truly, Princess, you are the most inexplicable
person I have ever seen.  I find you in the
morning with a volume of Spinoza in your hand,
trying to explain his particular dogma of philosophy
to poor Barbara; and in the afternoon you
are talking about this absurd child's book as if
it were something serious.  You snubbed that
poor professor last night, because he presumed
to give an opinion concerning Dante, never
having read him in the original; and to-day I
heard you ask my mother if Washington was in
the State of New York.  You are remarkably
erudite and positively ignorant at the same
time."

"*Eh bene, cosa volete*?  I--"

"Now what is the use of talking Italian to
me?  You know I can't understand a word of
it, and--"

A third voice interrupted Deering.  It was
that of a man who had joined the pair unnoticed
by either of them, the sound of his footsteps
being muffled by the deep grass.

"If Miss Almsford knew how pretty her
manner of speaking English was, she would never
have resort to the weaker language of her
birthplace to express her thoughts."

"What, Graham, with a gallant speech upon
his lips!  Wonder of wonders!  Princess, he
has the sharpest tongue and the keenest wit I
have ever known.  Beware of him!  When did
you come?"

"Just now; I rode over to see if Miss
Almsford was in the mood for a ride, and to offer my
services as cavalier, knowing that your
afternoons, my dear Deering, are too much occupied
for you to play esquire to this fair dame."

"It is the thing of all others I should enjoy,"
said Millicent; "I will be ready in ten minutes."

Deering strolled off, rather disconsolately, in
the direction of the dairy, Graham accompanying
him as far as the stable, where he proceeded to
put Barbara's saddle on the back of a sturdy
cob, which from his immovable character had
been named Sphinx.

The artist had visited the house several times
since his first meeting with Millicent, and had
promised to be her guide to the high hill-top,
whence a view of the Sierra Nevadas was to be
obtained.  Up the narrow bridle path toiled the
two horses, Graham's leading the way.  The
road was a difficult one, underbrush and rolling
stones making it dangerous for any horse which
was not sure-footed.  Old Sphinx set his feet
firmly on the solid ground, avoiding all pit-falls
in a wary fashion.  The air was sweet with the
spicy breath of the madrone tree, whose dark
red bark and brilliant glossy leaves gleamed out
here and there through the darker foliage of the
great redwoods.  The young man turned his
head over his shoulder, letting his mustang find
out the path, and talked to his companion, who
was not yet at home in the saddle.  One of the
new delights which the western country held for
Millicent was that of riding.  Most of her life
had been spent in Venice; and she had had little
opportunity for indulging in that most
exhilarating exercise.  Graham assured her that she
would soon make a good rider, as she quickly
learned to assume the graceful but uncomfortable
position compelled by the side-saddle.  She
was without fear, having that sort of bravery
which is found in some children, and which
comes from an ignorance of danger.

From a point in the road whence a view of
the happy valley was to be obtained, Graham
reined in his horse.  The wide, pleasant valley
lay below them, the house, its central point of
interest, standing surrounded by the orchard
and garden.  A brook wound like a silver ribbon
through the wide fields and wooded groves,
under rustic bridges, here and there breaking
into foam over a mass of stone, or a sudden
shelving of the land.

When they again started Graham dismounted,
and, passing his arm through the bridle of his
horse, took Sphinx by the rein and led him over
the rough bit of country.  Whether from an
exaggerated idea of courtesy, or because the
head covering was irksome, Graham doffed his
hat and walked bareheaded, the little shafts of
sunshine touching his dark hair with points of
light.  The tall girl noted the sun and shadow
which made this and all else lovely on this fair
afternoon.  As the ascent became steeper, the
trees were less dense and the path grew wider.
Graham still walked beside her horse, though
there was no longer need for him to do so.  As
they emerged upon a broad plateau Millicent
drew her breath and touched Graham lightly
with her whip, laying her finger on her lip and
pointing to a little hillside spring, which ran
dancing from the rich dark earth.  Close to the
spring stood a magnificent buck and a graceful
doe.  The stag had bent his head and was
drinking from the basin which the water had worn
for itself, and which was surrounded by a ring of
green turf, jewelled with star blue and pale rose
blossoms.  Of this tender herbage, so different
from the dried grass of the hillside and meadow,
the dainty doe was nibbling little morsels.  For
a moment neither of the animals perceived the
approach of the riders, and stood quite still in
their unconscious beauty.  Graham's hand
instinctively sought the revolver in his pocket.
As he was taking aim Millicent's velvet fingers
closed about the steel barrel, and she cried aloud,
"You could not be so cruel!"

At the sound of her voice the stag threw up
his great head with a mighty shiver, tossing the
crystal water drops from his nose.  Before the
last word was spoken the slender, dappled doe
had flashed across the path and was out of sight,
her mate with outstretched head following close
upon her track.  For an instant the flowing lines
of the swift motion were seen on the sky
background, and then the trembling leaves of the
thicket into which they had penetrated were all
that told of their flight.

"You are more tender-hearted than Miss Barbara."

"No, but I could not bear that those two
glorious creatures should be put out of the warm
sunlight which they love so well."

"Miss Barbara is an excellent shot; she could
have killed the stag from this point."

"And yet Barbara is really much better-hearted
than I, and feels other people's troubles
as if they were her own.  Everything is in habit
and education; she has looked upon deer in the
light of venison, as I have always considered
oxen in the light of future beef.  And yet, though
Barbara is so kind and good, I do not find her
*simpatica*--how shall I say?"

"You might say sympathetic or congenial,
Miss Almsford, if you could content yourself
with the English language."

"But it is not the same thing,--sympathetic
and *simpatica*; indeed it is an untranslatable
word.  I cannot always express my thoughts in
English."

"Would you allow me to suggest that it may
not be entirely the fault of the language, which
did not fail to express the thoughts of Chaucer
and Shakspeare, that you find it difficult to
make yourself understood?"

"Do I speak it so badly then?  You are not
complimentary."

"It is not that you speak it badly, but that
your vocabulary is limited, and that your mind
far outruns its limits.  I fancy you have never
read or thought much in a serious vein in the
simplest and the strongest of tongues."

"No, I have read very little English, but I
challenge your last statement.  I do not find
English the greatest language.  It is coarse by
the side of French; it is prosaic compared to
Italian.  Think of the fine distinctions, the
delicate shades of meaning, of the Gallic tongue.
Your English can only express the extremes."

"And yet to-day it is more a lender than a
borrower of words.  You cannot take up a
German or a French newspaper without finding an
Anglicism in every column."

"What does that prove?  Merely that the
Anglo-Saxon race is more restless than all
others.  They are the Goths of the nineteenth
century, and invade every corner of Europe,
Asia, and Africa, carrying with them their
barbarous language.  I have heard it intermingled
with Arabic in the Syrian desert.  It is small
wonder they feel the need of travel; there is
little enough to interest them at home."

"And yet I, who have lived half my life in
Europe, elect to pass the remainder of it in this
country of my own free choice.  How do you
account for that?"

"I cannot account for it save as an aberration
of the brain.  It is strange, too, for you
Americans are not a patriotic people."

"You think not?"

"It does not strike me so."

"You are mistaken, Miss Almsford; but your
mistake is a natural one.  These ideas, believe
me, are not worthy of you, and have been derived
by you from some perverted mind.  Your own
is too clear to have formed such opinions.  They
have been engrafted or inherited.  How should
you really have any idea but the most chimerical
one, of America or Americans?  You have passed
your life among a race of people most unlike them,
and you have been taught to ignore the country
and the race to which you belong.  You consider
the matter of your birth as a misfortune, and you
have learned to look down on your country, from
below.  I have had some experience of life in
the various American colonies in Europe, and I
think it a great misfortune to be one of those
expatriated Americans.  They are people
without a country.  They feel no responsibility
toward any larger society than their own small
household circle.  Unless he is called by the
exigencies of his profession to Europe, the
American European is very apt to deteriorate
greatly.  He is in antagonism with the country
which he has abandoned, and his foothold in
foreign society is too much on tolerance to be
fortunate in its effects on his character."

By this time the strong horses had reached
the summit of the foot-hill, and stood breathing
heavily.  The riders dropped their conversation,
which was drawing near to a discussion,
and Millicent looked with wide eyes out over
the grand scene.  Far off stretched the line of
the Sierras, the mountain barrier which severs
the land of gold from the surrounding country.
The sky was faintly flushed with a forewarning
of the sunset, and a soft breeze rustled the tree
tops, and blew into their faces.

"Are you rewarded for the long ascent, maiden
from afar?"

"Yes," answered Millicent softly.

As they made the steep descent together
Graham talked, in his strong, sweet voice, of his
life in the old tower, of his work, of the pictures
he had painted, and those which he dreamed of
making some day.  The self-dependent and
contained young man was much attracted by the
girl with the strange ideas and exquisite
manners.  On the night when they had first met, he
had been drawn towards her by an attraction
which seemed irresistible.  It was not her beauty
nor her intelligence which so much affected him,
as a nameless charm like the warmth of a bright
fire on a cool day, which seemed to wrap him
about with a sense of comfort.  When he left
her this glow was still about him, but as hours
passed it seemed to fade away and leave him
strangely cold.  He felt for the first time how
desolate was his life; and he remembered her in
his lonely tower as a traveller in the African
desert recalls the green oasis where his last
draught of water has been drained.  Yet
sometimes, when they talked together, came a strange
antagonism between them like an impalpable
mist, chilling the warmth which at meeting
always kindled in her eyes and in his own bosom.
That the discordance came from himself he
often felt, and yet he was helpless in the face of
it.  The conversation of that afternoon was a
type of their interviews, which were often marred
by discussions not far removed from disputes.
Whose fault was it?  Wherein lay the incompatibility?
Did it arise from either of their characters,
or from the circumstances and surroundings
in which they met?  He asked himself the
question a score of times and left it always
unanswered.  Graham had not been without
experience of women.  In his early youth he had
had the misfortune to fall deeply in love with a
frivolous and heartless girl.  His nature was of
a complex character, passionate to an unusual
degree, yet guided by an intelligence stronger
than passion.  He had been deceived and
outraged in every feeling by the heartless coquette,
whose worst characteristic was her entire
incapacity for affection.  After breaking her faith
with him, she had tried to win him back again,
and had sued for the love which she had so
lightly won and refused.  But though he still
loved her with the full force of his being, he had
repulsed the woman whom he could no longer
respect.  Then came the long death-agony of
deceived love, leaving its unmistakable traces on
heart and brain and body.  It was graven on
the white brow; it was painted in the deep eyes,
with their unfathomable look of doubt; it
strengthened the fibres of the strong brain with
the greater power which great suffering brings
to intelligence of a high order; and alas! saddest
of all, it chilled the hot heart-blood and left it
cooler and more sluggish in its flow.  Sorrowful
was the man for the sorrow in the world, but
pity for the grief of those about him was not so
strong in him as it had been before.  The
bitterness which follows the spoiling of the
rose-sweetness of love was happily modified by the
broad humanitarian character of the man.  It
failed to make him bitter towards the world for
its treatment of himself.  He accepted manfully
the knockdown blow which fate had dealt him;
and if he mourned it was in secret,--he burdened
no other soul with his misery.  But as it was a
woman who had darkened his life and drawn the
veil of grief about his young soul, the whole rage
of grief and bitterness which wore his heart went
out toward her sex.  As he had loved all women
for her sweet sake, so now did he distrust them
all because she had proved false.  Evil to him
appeared abstractly as a feminine element in the
world; and the great qualities of nobility,
abnegation, and heroism in his eyes were masculine
attributes only.  Too chivalrous by nature to
think of himself as in opposition to the gentler
sex, his position was in point of fact antagonistic
to them.  He was courteous in their company,
but he always avoided it.  In deed, as in word,
he treated them with reverence, speaking no
lightlier of them behind their backs than to
their faces.  The bitterness never broke the
barriers of his vexed heart in noxious word or jest,
but it lay there always embittering his life.  He
had finally ceased to remember his crushed
hopes and spoiled youth; and then had succeeded
a long time wherein he seemed to feel not at all.
There was left him always his pious devotion to
his mother, touching in its pathetic constancy,
as to the one creature given him to love.  For
the gentle Mrs. Deering, whose face recalled that
of his only living parent, he felt a real sentiment
of friendship.  Barbara, with her sweet,
wholesome nature, he esteemed more highly than
other young women; but since his intimacy with
the family he had always emphasized his regard
for the son and mother of the house; and
Barbara had felt the difference in his voice when he
addressed her.  It grew colder, and his manner
became formal, if by chance they were thrown
together alone.

The charm by which Millicent swayed him,
he said to himself, was not love.  He looked
back into the black and stormy past, and
compared his feelings for this girl with those which
had once torn his breast.  She charmed him,
but he surely did not love her.  He felt a sense
of cold discomfort on leaving her, but it was
very different from the passionate grief which
he once had suffered.  This was what he
thought when he contemplated the subject at
all, which was not very often.  For the most
part he let himself drift down the pleasant
summer tide.  Skies were blue and roses sweet.  If
Millicent made the sky seem bluer, if the roses
took on a more perfect hue when she wore them
in her bosom, it was because she was like the
skies and roses, tender and full of warmth and
color.  Did not the buds blush into flowers for
all the world as well as for him?  Did not the
white clouds dip and dance across the sky for
other men's pleasure as well as his own?  Was
not the whole small world of the San Rosario
Ranch made more blithe and happily alive by
the advent of Millicent Almsford, the maiden
from afar?  Barbara had been stimulated by
the new atmosphere to do more thinking, and
had found less time for fancy-work and more
leisure for reading.  Mrs. Deering, gentlest of
women, found a companionship in the stranger
which she had at first thought impossible; and
Hal, poor Hal, was vainly fighting against the
witching spell which was fast making him the
slave of the girl, who he had prophesied was
too cold to interest him.

Had Graham known the change which his
companionship had wrought upon Millicent, he
would have felt that if there was no danger for
him in those swift fleeting hours passed
together, there might be for her.  The boredom
which she had experienced at first was now
dissipated, and every phase of the novel life at
the Ranch had a charm for her.

The loud summons of the supper-bell struck
the ears of the young people as they drew near
the house; and the family stood waiting on the
piazza as they reined in their horses before the door.

"Are you tired, Millicent?" was the anxious
question of Mrs. Deering.

"Did you get a clear view of the mountains?"
asked Barbara.

"How did Sphinx go?" said Hal.

"I cannot answer you all at once," cried
Millicent, breathless from the rapid gallop which had
brought them to the house; "but it was perfectly
delightful.  Sphinx behaved beautifully, and
Mr. Graham almost as well.  The view is wonderful,
and I think the country of California very fine.
There is a compliment for you all; do not
pretend I never say anything nice about it."

"My dear, we have an invitation to go down
to San Real to visit the Shallops.  Mamma
thinks we had better start to-morrow.
Mr. Graham, here is a note for you which came
enclosed in my letter.  I fancy it carries the same
invitation to you.  It will be so nice at the
seashore.  You will like it, Millicent, won't you?"

"I like it here," Millicent answered, as she
walked slowly up the steps; "but if you all want
to go, I am willing.  Who are the Shallops?
Where is San Real?"

Graham had torn open his letter, which he
quickly perused.  Millicent looked inquiringly
at him, and he answered her unspoken query:

"Yes, Mrs. Shallop asks me to join your
party for a week at her pleasant house.  Very
kind of her, I am sure; but I never do that sort
of thing.  I--"

"Now, Graham," interrupted Mrs. Deering,
"say nothing about it till I have talked it over
with you.  I have a particular reason for
advising you to go.  We will telegraph the answer
in the morning, and can make up our minds in
the course of the evening."

"I am yours to command in this and all
things, Madame," said Graham, offering his arm
to his hostess; "and there stands Ah Lam ready
to weep because the muffins are growing cold;
and I am famously hungry after our ride."

Tea being ended, Mrs. Deering and Graham
paced the gravel path around the house for half
an hour.  It was evident to the group on the
piazza that a discussion was going on between
them.  They spoke in low, earnest voices, whose
tones did not escape Millicent's sensitive
hearing, though she failed to catch the import of
the words.

"For my sake," she finally heard Mrs. Deering
say in a pleading voice.

"Dear my lady, is it just to put it on that ground?"

"But if you will hear to it on no other,"
she argued.

"Think what it is you ask of me.  To leave
my tower and my man Friday for a luxurious
household with plethoric master and servants;
to stagnate for a week among those ridiculous
people who fill San Real in the summer; and
all this not because it will do me or any one else
any good, but to the end that I may begin the
portraits I have already refused to paint.  You
know that I am not suited to that sort of hack
work.  How can I make a picture of that
over-fed Shallop or his pinched, good little wife?"

"But our work cannot all be that which is
best suited to us--"

"It should be--"

"Remember, Graham, that in three weeks the
payment for the studio is due--"

"Ah, kindest one! you never forget me; bless
you for your sweetness and thoughtfulness.
Yes, I will go and do my best to make Shallop
look like something other than an ex-blacksmith,
but it is indeed bitter."

"You will find that there will be compensations,"
said Mrs. Deering, her eyes resting on
the pretty group on the piazza: Barbara sitting
at Millicent's feet, and Hal reaching up to pluck
a spray of honeysuckles for her hair.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Where have we lived and loved before this, sweet?
   |  My will ere now hath led thy wayward feet;
   |  I knew thy beauties--limbs, lips, brows, and hair--
   |  Before these eyes beheld and found thee fair.

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Deering's arguments carried the day,
and Graham decided to accompany the young
ladies to San Real.  Ferrara was to be of the
party.  It was a bright morning which saw
the departure of the three travellers from the
Ranch.  Hal drove them to the station in a very
disconsolate frame of mind.  During Ralph
Almsford's long absences, it was impossible for him to
leave the Ranch, in which his interests were all
vested; and it seemed rather hard that Graham
should enjoy the pleasure which he had been
obliged to decline.  Henry Deering was a
susceptible young man, and he was already enthralled
by the soft voice and deep eyes of the girl on
whom he had bestowed the title of Princess.
His friendship for John Graham was one of the
strongest feelings he had ever known.  He admired
him more than any person he knew.  He
respected the sterling character of the man, on
whose honor he would have staked his life; and
yet it was hard that Graham should devote
himself to the Princess, for he said to himself there
could be no chance for him against such a rival.

The country through which the railroad from
San Rosario to San Real passes is most
picturesque.  Round the high hills winds the yellow
line of the track, making horseshoe loops, so
that the engine, Millicent said, sometimes turned
round and looked the passengers in the face.
Long, high bridges carry the shining steel
threads of travel over deep canyons, with fierce
rocky sides and stony bottoms.  The scenery is
very wild and beautiful, and the moderate pace
at which the shaky little engine tugged along
the rickety cars gave the travellers every
opportunity for seeing and admiring the view.

A great mountain, lying among the low foothills,
remained in view through the greater part
of the route; it was conical and sharp-pointed,
like the typical mountain of the atlas.  A great
fire had lately raged for days among the
spreading trees and thick undergrowth; and now that
the smoke had cleared away, the path which
the flame had taken was distinctly visible from
certain points.  A great cross lay stamped on the
mountain-side, for all men to see.  The baptism
of fire had left the symbol which was sanctified
eighteen hundred years ago.  Graham attracted
Millicent's attention to this, which, she said,
would have been considered a miracle in Italy.

"Are they not happy, those dear simple-minded
Italians?  A large portion of them do
really believe in miracles to this day."  Millicent
was the speaker.

"Yes, far happier than those of us who have
lost all belief in anything beyond our own bodies,
and the facts which that body's senses reveal to us."

"And you believe--"

"Ask me not, maiden, what I believe.  I
can only hope.  But this I know, that there is
need to you and to me, to all of us of this
generation, to whom the old fallacious dogmas
of dead creeds are meaningless, of faith.  This
is not the age of belief.  The things which have
been considered necessary draperies to religion
are stripped off; but because truth is naked, it
is none the less truth.  Faith in that part of
ourselves which is not of earth, we must hold
fast to, when all else is rent from our feeble natures."

"You should be a preacher.  I think that
you have got the right end of the truth, perhaps--"

Barbara, who had sat a silent listener to this
conversation between the two young people,
now spoke for the first time.

"I know little of the modern scientific
theories, which Mr. Graham thinks have stripped
religion of much that used to belong to it; but to
me the denial of a Creator is the most illogical
and ignorant act of which the human mind is
capable.  Look at that house we are just passing.
If I should tell you that it never was built,
that no architect or workman ever planned and
executed its design, you would say that my talk
was too idle to require contradiction.  And yet
you will tell me that the pleasant earth on
which the house stands, the very trees which
furnished its wood, the metals and stone which are
wrought into it, exist, and yet knew no Maker."

"Barbara, do not let us talk any more about it;
it is impossible for you and me to speak
understandingly to each other on these subjects.
Mr. Graham stands midway between your conventional
faith and my unbelief; he can understand
us both.  Now let us talk about love and roses."

"*Apropos* of love and roses, here comes Ferrara,
laden with both of those fragile commodities,
which he will straightway lay at Miss Barbara's
feet.  If you like, Miss Almsford, we will make
the next stage of our journey on the engine.  I
spoke to the engineer, at the last station, of your
desire to see the mechanism of his locomotive.
You will find the man quite clean and
intelligent."

Ferrara joined the party at this moment,
having come up to meet the train at this station.
He carried a handful of great yellow roses,
which he presented to Barbara with a low bow.
The girl looked beseechingly at Millicent, who
laughed rather heartlessly, and, escorted by
Graham, proceeded to the engine.  She was
pleasantly received by its presiding genius, a
hatchet-faced, sharp-voiced Yankee, who made
a place for her on his little cushioned seat at
one side of the locomotive.  As soon as she
was comfortably ensconced here, Graham sitting
at her feet, the engineer rang the bell and
allowed Millicent to pull the lever, which set the
panting creature of iron and wood a-screaming.
With a guttural shriek the engine pulled itself
together and started off down the track at a
good speed.  Once in motion, the breeze,
blowing through the windows, cooled the intense
heat.  Millicent looked straight down the
narrowing steel rails with that keen sense of pleasure
which every novel experience gave her.
Presently she asked the small Yankee to explain
the use of the steam gauge and of the various
appliances crowded into the small space where
she sat.  The fireman, a hideous giant, black
and grimy, occasionally opened a door and fed
the furious fire with great lumps of coal.  When
it was well filled he varied his occupation by
watering the wooden parts of the engine with a
long rubber hose, lest they should ignite from
the great heat.  On a little shelf above her seat
Millicent espied a book, toward which she
instinctively stretched her hand.  Books always
acted on Millicent like magnets.  The volume
proved to be a Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, lately
published in a cheap edition.  She asked the
sharp-faced engineer if he found the matter
interesting, and was somewhat astonished by his
astute remarks on the work and the personage
of whom it treated.  She looked at Graham in
some astonishment, but he seemed in no-wise
surprised at the phenomenon of a working-man
in a blue blouse who could intelligently read
and understand the seriously written biography
of the great conqueror.  The steam gauge rose
higher and higher, while the engine tore along
at a quicker speed in order to please the
delicate visitor, who was now allowed to move
the lever, and to pull the bell when they passed
the signals requiring them to do so.  The
engineer was an interesting person, Millicent
thought; he told her many humorous stories of
his experiences, and some tragical ones.  His
wife had on one occasion accompanied him on
a trip, sitting on the very place where Millicent
now reposed.  An accident had occurred, a
broken rail throwing the cars down a high
embankment, while the weight of the engine had
saved them both from the terrible fate of many
of the passengers.  From that day his wife had
refused ever to travel in any part of the train
save in the small cabin where her husband sat.
In a collision, Millicent learned, the dread fate
of the engineer could only be avoided by desertion
of his post; and the speaker bore witness to
the steadfast bravery of more than one of his
mates who had preferred death to such an act.
As he talked he kept his eyes fixed on the two
shining rails stretching before them.  Sometimes,
when interested in his own story, or their
remarks, the engineer would look for a moment
into Millicent's face; and she, with a terrified
consciousness that her eyes were the only ones
which could see any obstruction before the train
thundering along at a great speed, would strain
her vision to the utmost down the narrowing
line of track.  What an awful responsibility lay
upon the shoulders of this cheerful little man,
with his twinkling gimlet blue eyes, and how
lightly he seemed to carry his burden.  She
grew quite white and silent at the thought; and
when her hand, guided by the engineer, brought
the panting locomotive to a standstill at the
next station, she gladly stepped down upon the
narrow platform, steadied by Graham's arm.
They parted from the engineer with many
expressions of pleasure for the ride they had
enjoyed, and joined Barbara and Ferrara in the car.

San Real is one of the pleasantest sea-side
towns to be found on the coast of California.
It has become quite lately a fashionable summer
resort, and boasts two large hotels, a colony of
boarding-houses, and half a dozen private
residences.  All of these are of modest dimensions,
with the single exception of the pretentious
mansion of Mr. Patrick Shallop, which stands at the
distance of a mile from the little village
composed of one long street of shops and saloons.

At the station the party found a handsome
carriage awaiting them, drawn by two prancing
gray horses and decorated with sprawling
coats-of-arms.  The groom and driver were dressed
according to the latest English fashion, and the
tidy cart for the luggage was driven by a liveried
menial.  Millicent noted these details with
surprise as she sank back on the satin cushions of
the landau, and Graham laughingly commented
upon her evident astonishment at the smart equipage.

"It appears, O fair Venetian, that you are
surprised at this grandeur.  Did not Miss
Barbara prepare you for it?"

"No," answered the young woman quietly;
she did not like to be laughed at.  As the
carriage rolled along the village street, Millicent
gave a little cry of joy: "I smell the sea!" she cried.

Soon after they emerged from the shadow of
the houses and struck the road which led to the
brow of the cliffs.  There, for the first time since
she had left New York, Millicent looked out
over the salt waves.  The cool sea breeze twisted
the curls which clustered about her forehead
into tighter rings, and fanned a color into her
marble cheek.  She kissed her hand toward the
great gray ocean as if gladly greeting the Pacific.
Below the cliffs stretched the white beach, with
its rows of bathing-houses, and booths hung
with gay-colored wares.  They had but time to
glance at the view when the carriage turned
from the road and entered a long avenue
bordered with good-sized trees.  Marble statues
gleamed through the dark green of the luxuriant
gardens, and odorous flowers made the air
heavy with sweetness.  Before the door of an
enormous house the horses were drawn up, and
Barbara and Millicent, followed by Graham and
Ferrara, entered the wide hall.  The exterior of
the house was far from attractive.  The material
used was exclusively wood, which in California
is almost universally employed in private
dwellings.  The fear of earthquakes always lurks in
the mind of the Californian, and houses of brick
or stone are very rare.  The model adopted by
the architect was a novel one, and seemed a
combination of the Ionic, Corinthian, and Queen
Anne styles.  Stucco and lath represented
decorations and columns which would have been
appropriate in marble or granite.  The massive
style and the flimsy material gave an
incongruous appearance to the great building.  The
wide terrace which surrounded the house, with
its bright parterres of flowers, and the pleasant
piazza, with roof and pillars like a Norman
cloister, were, however, wonderfully attractive.
Beyond the close-clipped emerald lawn was seen
the ocean, whose white curling waves danced
merrily in the unbroken sunshine.

The guests found Mrs. Shallop awaiting them
in a long dim drawing-room.  She was a skimpy
pattern of feminality, with a pitiful, pinched face,
great sad-looking eyes, colorless, sandy hair, and
a thin, angular body.  Though it was early in
the afternoon, the elegance of her dress would
have been suitable to a ball room.  The heavy
folds of rich blue brocade stood out from the
poor little figure whose emaciated lines its rich
fabric refused to indicate.  She advanced
toward her guests with something of an effort,
as if the burden of dress which was laid upon
her were greater than she could bear.  Her
welcome was, however, very cordial; and her
bony little hands, with their weight of jewels,
clasped Barbara's strong fingers affectionately.

"I am real glad you have all come, Miss
Deering.  I was awful fidgety about the train's
being late.  Miss Almsford, I am real pleased
to see you.  Mister Graham, happy to see
you, sir.  I hope your health is better, Mister
Ferrara?"

Each of the guests acknowledged the kindly
greeting, and some general conversation ensued.
Millicent looked about the great drawing-room,
noting the various beautiful articles of furniture,
the Venetian glasses, the pictures and rich
embroideries, the thousand-and-one bits of *bric-à-brac*
which decorated the walls and cabinets of
the lofty apartment.  It was in truth a rarely
beautiful room, the prevailing color a deep, soft
crimson, the wood-work all painted white and
delicately carved.  Below the ceiling ran a frieze,
the work of John Graham.  The subject treated
was the history of Cupid and Psyche.  The
scenes were divided into panels by twining
sprays of rose-vines charmingly treated.  The
first represented the meeting of the two lovers,
their marriage being the next in order.  In the
third compartment the doubting Psyche looks
for the first time on the radiant beauty of the
sleeping God.  Next the artist had portrayed the
forsaken, love-lorn bride sitting alone, crushed
with grief, repenting the fatal curiosity which
prompted her to peer too closely into the
nature of love,--that greatest of boons, which
should be accepted joyously and with thanksgiving,
and to which doubt means death.  The
hard services required by Cytherea from the
desolate Psyche were exquisitely rendered; and
the final scene of the reunion of the two lovers
was the masterpiece of the whole work.  Psyche,
radiant with new-found love and joy, her face
touched with a more than mortal beauty by the
grief she has endured, stands looking reverently
into the face of the strongest of gods.  Her
rainbow wings can lift her now, to soar beside
her lover, even to Olympus.

Millicent admired the beautiful frieze, which
the hostess confessed troubled her sorely
because of the scanty raiment which she said
seemed to have been the fashion of the time it
represented.

"Mister Graham," she explained, had induced
her to keep it in the place for which it had been
designed.  Mrs. Shallop added that the artist
had refused to follow her suggestion of adding
clothing to the half nude bodies; and had,
moreover, extracted a promise from her
husband that he would never allow any other
painter to be intrusted with thus supplementing
the airy rainbow draperies of the figures.

Miss Almsford was much astonished at the
very beautiful interior of the great Shallop
house, and soon learned that its furnishing and
decoration had been intrusted to Graham, who
was gifted with that rarest and most valuable of
aesthetic qualities, a perfect and original taste.

"It is the only house Mr. Graham has ever
arranged, and he says he will never do another.
He was in Europe while it was being built, and
mamma persuaded the Shallops to give him
*carte blanche* to buy all the beautiful things he
could lay hands upon," Barbara explained.

The guests were shown to their rooms by the
hostess, and Millicent gave an exclamation of
delight on entering the apartment allotted to
her.  It was indeed a unique room.  The walls
were panelled in ebony to a third of their height,
a bright light pattern in flowers running to
the ceiling, and relieving what might
otherwise have been sombre.  The glossy black wood
was carved into a wide, high fireplace, where two
brass andirons, curiously wrought with twisted
dragons, supported a fire whose bright blaze
was most welcome to Millicent.  She found the
season very cold compared to the still, hot Italian
summers.  Below the mantel the fire shone out
in welcome, but above the ebony shelf, set in
the wall, was a picture which seemed fuller of
light and color than the leaping flames.  A
Venetian scene with a terrace whereon sat men
and maidens in the warm glow of the sunset,
looking out over a stretch of many-toned water,
in which were mirrored sky and clouds, trees,
draperies, and graceful human figures.  A black
gondola, partly shown in the foreground, might
have held the painter while he sketched the
brilliant scene.

"It is my Venice!" cried Millicent, "it is my
home!"  Her eyes were full of tears.  She caught
Barbara by the arm and rapidly described to
her the point from which the picture had been painted.

"Mr. Graham will be very much pleased that
you recognized the spot."

"Is it *his* picture?  Yes, I ought to have
known it."

"Why, are you clairvoyant?"

"Yes, Barbara, sometimes."

Millicent seemed somewhat disconcerted at
what she had said; and, without noticing
anything more in the pretty room, ascended the
dainty little ebon staircase with its fanciful rail,
and, pushing back a panel which slid into the
wall, entered her bedroom.  Later, when both
of the girls had exchanged their travelling
dresses, Barbara knocked at Millicent's boudoir.

"*Entraté*," was the response, in obedience to
which she opened the door, and found Millicent
lying on the low, crescent-shaped sofa, her fair
head resting on a pile of cushions.  Her
graceful figure was clad in a gown soft amber in
color, her only ornaments wonderful strings of
amber beads falling over the white neck, which
the fashion of the frock disclosed, and encircling
the smooth bare arms, with their delicate tracery
of blue veins like the lines in purest marble.
Her hands were hidden, clasped behind her
head, and the expression of her face was almost
vacant in its look of absorbing reverie.  Beside
her on the floor lay a small parchment book,
ivory-clasped,--"The Sonnets of Petrarch."  Her
eyes were fixed on the panel over the mantel
shelf, but they saw more than the artist had
pictured with brush and color: a waking day
dream of her home as she had last seen it, and
ah! how much sweeter an imagining of
how she might next see it,--with what surroundings,
with what companionship!  O blessed dream-castles
of women, in which all the cares and
privations of life are forgotten; in which there is
never a weariness or a pain; where lonely
watching is succeeded by joyous reunion; where those
who have lived and know too surely that they
must die without that greatest happiness which
life can hold, drink the cup of joy innocently,
purely, fearing no bitter after-taste, finding no
foul dregs!

At Barbara's entrance Millicent slowly drew
herself back from dreamland into the actual
present.  Her eyes, which had been staring widely
with a blank look, now seemed to change color
with returning consciousness.  It was a long
journey, and she gave a deep sigh when it was
accomplished, and she realized that plump,
pretty Barbara, with her best frock and ribbons,
stood by her side looking curiously in her face.

"I was reading, and I fancy I had fallen asleep,
Bab, what can I do for you?"

"Mrs. Shallop suggested our all having tea
here, if you liked.  They do not dine till eight
to-night.  Mr. Shallop has been detained in San
Francisco."

"Very well, dear, just as you say.  You did
not mean to send for the gentlemen?"

"Oh, yes, this room is always used for a tea
room, unless you object, of course.  If you
prefer to 'sport your oak,' you have a perfect right
to do so, and we will go downstairs."

"No, no, let us have it here by all means, if it
is the custom."

Barbara rang the bell, which was answered by
a ponderous butler with a condescending
manner, white neckcloth, bandy legs, and an
apoplectic countenance.  The individual had been
imported by the Shallops along with the
footman and driver, his two younger brothers, who,
in common with all the other members of the
household, from Mr. Shallop down to the boots,
stood in awe of him.  To this worthy Barbara
somewhat timidly gave orders that tea should
be brought, and the gentlemen warned that it
awaited them.

"Very good, miss," answered the functionary
in the driest possible tone, his features curled into
an expression of scorn toward the whole human
race.  His bow was so terrific in its icy grandeur
that Barbara shivered as he left the room.

"I hate that man, and he knows it.  He
always spoils my appetite by glaring at me all
through dinner; and I think he takes an evil
delight in handing all the most impossible dishes
to me first, which I have to refuse, because I
don't dare to attack them."

The man shortly after returned and laid a low
round table in the bow-window for tea.  Barbara
placed herself behind the old-fashioned silver
urn and busied herself with tea-making, while
Millicent drew up the blinds and let the sunset
into the room.  Soon Graham came in, begging
for a cup of tea, a sure bait to him, he said,
especially when Miss Deering poured out the
delicious beverage.  This last speech he made
with an exaggeratedly deep bow, which
grotesqued the compliment and made the girl's
cheek redden.  Shortly after, Ferrara joined
the party, and a pleasant tea-drinking ensued,
though the last comer refused to be tempted
by the pretty cups of smoking Souchong.

"Neither will I reproach my luncheon, nor
insult the excellent dinner which I am sure
Mrs. Shallop will give us, by the uncivilized fashion
of drinking tea at this hour."

"Miss Almsford thinks we are too civilized
here, Ferrara.  She almost fainted when she
learned that I was the possessor of a dress-coat.
She hoped to find us in eternal suits of corduroy
and flannel, with top-boots and bowie knives."

"You have exactly described the costume in
which I first saw you, Mr. Graham; so you
surely should not blame me for believing that,
in wearing it, you followed the prevailing fashion
of your country."

"That alters the case; but are you not
mistaken?  I remember having taken particular
care to don a black coat on that evening--do
you remember?--when I surprised you by the fire."

"But I had seen you before that, though you
had never seen me."

"When, fair lady?  May I hope that our
first encounter was in your white dreams?"

The girl shook her head and laughed.

"Was it perhaps in another existence?  Did
we dance together, you and I, in the old happy
days when Pan reigned?  Now I think of it,
were you not the wood-nymph who vanished
from me into the arms of a great tree?  Did
you not tread one measure with me in the merry
wood-dance, and then leave me desolate with a
tryst appointed but never kept?"

"Did you not soon find another partner?"

"I waited long alone."

"And if I could not come sooner?"

"Well, you have come at last to keep the
tryst.  Will you finish that dance which was
begun so many eons ago?"

"Ay me! and can we now dance the same
measure, you and I?  Would not our feet tread
inharmonious steps?"

"Which of us can say?  Shall we try?"

"If you say my word was given, I know not
how to break it."

The room had grown dim, and Barbara and
Ferrara in the recess of the window were speaking
together, while Millicent sat gazing dreamily
into the glowing heart of the low-burning fire,
conscious that Graham was looking intently on
her face.  She dared not lift her eyes to his,
and veiled them with the downcast lids.  Not
what she might read daunted her, but what
might be revealed to the man who sat leaning
forward in the quaintly-carven oak chair.

"It is understood then that you admit my
claim to your hand,--for one dance at least?
You acknowledge the promise made so many
dim years back?  You have come across wide,
tossing seas and over broad, sun-parched fields
to keep the tryst you made with me, a smile
upon your face, a shadow in your eyes?"

For answer the girl bowed her head.

"Nay, I must hear it from your very own lips.
Is it for this that you have come?"

"Yes."  The word came soft as twilight
shadows, sweet as Nature's harmony.  A long pause
preceded the low-breathed monosyllable, the
word which fond women love best to speak and
which listening lovers thrill, half cold, half hot,
at hearing.  And when it was spoken and heard
came a second silence, even longer than the
first; and yet what they had said was begun
in badinage, and was finished without serious
thought by either man or woman.  Dangerous
words! dangerous silence! happy time, how oft
remembered in later days!

"Did I hear you asking Miss Almsford for
a dance, Graham?  What ball are you contemplating?
I have heard of none unless you mean
to invite us all to your tower for a frolic.  Be
sure you do not leave me out; I have long
wished to visit your hermitage."

"If the ladies would so highly honor a lonely
dweller in the woods as to allow him the felicity
of being their host, be sure, my dear Ferrara,
that you shall escort them to my humble abode."

"Really, are you in earnest?  I have always
wished to see your tower.  When shall we come?"

"That is for you to say, Miss Deering.  Any
day which will suit your convenience will be
agreeable to me."

"We will settle it after we return to the Ranch."

Soon after this Mrs. Shallop joined the group,
and they all went out and walked on the wide
terrace till dinner was served.  Here Millicent met
Mr. Shallop for the first time.  He was a
heavy-featured Irishman, with light-blue eyes,
overhanging brows, and thick, coarse brown hair.
His badly modelled nose had a decided
upward tendency, and the broad mouth disclosed
sharp, long teeth, like those of an inferior animal.
When he smiled he showed the whole set, which
gave him a rather ferocious aspect.  His face
was clean shaven, save for a fringe of whisker
stretching from the lobe of the ear to the lower
jaw.  With a pipe and a shillelah he would have
been an excellent specimen of a patron of
Donnybrook Fair.  On this occasion he wore
irreproachable evening dress.  His linen was
finer than Graham's, and the cut of his collar
and pattern of his studs were of a later fashion
than those worn by Ferrara.  A valet's care
had smoothed the rough hair and cared for the
ugly hands.  One of his peculiarities was to
address all ladies as "Marm."  His conversation
was not unintelligent, and betrayed a keen, sharp
mind, which clearly understood those things
which came in close contact with it, but whose
mental vision was bounded by the physical one.
Those things which he had learned by
experience he knew absolutely, and he never
questioned or theorized on subjects which did not
directly touch himself or his own interests.
California had been to him a place which held a
gold mine, nothing more or less.  His history,
which he made no effort to conceal, was not
an uncommon one.  He had come out in '49,
among the fevered crowd of gold-seekers drawn
from every country, from every station in life, by
the loadstone which had been discovered on the
banks, of the American River, by James
Marshall.  He had come to San Francisco in those
early days when law and order were not, save
when the conscience of the public, stronger and
purer in its united power than in the individuals
which compose it, was awakened, and hastened
to punish a crime by a rude and swift justice.
Shallop had built a cabin in which he lived, and
in which he sold, when he was networking in the
gulches, any articles of food which he was able to
procure.  When there were no potatoes or bread,
he closed the door of his shanty and started
off with pick and washing-pan for the gulches.
When these staple edibles were to be had, he
made a brisk trade in catering to the half-starved
miners.  It had been said that though Shallop's
bread was heavy, it cost nearly its weight in
gold.  In those days he had wooed and married
the widow of a brother miner, one of the few
women whose sad lot brought them to the land
of disorder and bloodshed.  A few weeks only
elapsed, before the widowed woman gladly
changed her state for the protection of the
strong arm of Patrick Shallop, to whom she
became deeply attached, with a pathetic love
resembling that of a dog for a kind master.  The
bread grew lighter then, and sometimes the
potatoes fed pitiful pale youths who brought no
store of gold-dust to pay for them.  Patrick
Shallop, living in the most magnificent dwelling
in the whole length and breadth of California,
was sometimes moved to tell of the little cabin
where he had brought home his bride on a wet
night, borrowing an umbrella to place over the
bed to keep the rain from wetting her to the
skin.  There had been times when things had
gone badly with the inmates of the little cabin,
and days had passed when the mother's ears
were torn with the cries of children hungry for
bread.  It was at this time that Barbara's father
had known the Shallops.  Mr. Deering was a
delicately bred, handsome young man, who had
come with the eager crowd of men all pushing
ruthlessly forward to the golden goal, sometimes
trampling to death the weaker brothers who fell
by the wayside.  Sick of a fever, faint and dying,
he was plundered of his hard-earned store of
gold-dust, and would have been murdered by
his robber but for the interposition of Shallop,
who stood by to see fair play, and carried the
sick man home to his shanty, where the tender
nursing of the busy wife saved his life a second
time.  Adversity makes strange companionships
between men; and the friendship between
the saloon-keeper and the delicately nurtured
youth with the blood of a Puritan ancestry
in his veins, was one which lasted through both
their lives.  By some mining exploits which
would hardly bear the light of day, but which
were, alas! not more uncommon at that time
than at the present day, the Irishman had made
a colossal fortune which placed him among the
richest men in the world.  There could be
little sympathy between the two men whom the
chances of that wild time had thrown together for
the moment, but a cordiality was always felt; and
after Mr. Deering's death frequent visits were
exchanged between the dwellers of the San Rosario
Ranch and the inmates of the most celebrated
house on the borders of the Pacific Ocean.

The dinner was a long one, served with all the
tedious formalities which the fierce butler chose
to inflict.  It was not until the servants had
withdrawn that the host and hostess, who stood
in mortal dread of their chief functionary, their
oracle on all matters of etiquette, seemed to
feel themselves at home at their own table.
The removal of this restraint, and the excellent
wine, served to make the last quarter of an hour
spent over the dessert the pleasantest part of
the repast.  Millicent, sitting at the right hand
of her host, at last succeeded in making him tell
some anecdotes of his early Californian
experiences, to which she listened with breathless
interest.  Her feelings were undergoing a radical
change; and if the country which she at first
detested had not yet become dear to her, she
certainly felt the greatest interest and curiosity
to learn more of it.  In the old dreamy life of
Venice, her days had been spent in golden
visions of a vanished grandeur.  She was now
awaking to the stirring reality of the present,
and felt dimly that to be an heir to the glories
of the past was but a part of living,--an
inheritance which affects us less than the actual doing
and striving of our own times.

The party sat together in the library, with its
comfortable chairs and rows of undisturbed
books sleeping between their gilded covers,
until late in the evening.  The conversation was
general, and the quick mind of the stranger
guest learned from it much that roused her
attention.  "If I only had four ears instead of
two!" she cried at last, after a vain endeavor
to follow at the same time a discussion between
Ferrara and Mr. Shallop on the best method of
vine culture, and a conversation between
Graham and Mrs. Shallop on the subject of the
public schools.  Soon after this, the ladies left
the room; and Millicent, her pulses all a-tremble
with the various new experiences of the day,
was slow in falling asleep.  That night her lips
forgot to give their wonted homesick sigh for
Italy, for Venice.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
   |  When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow do you say?"

.. vspace:: 2

The week's visit at the Shallops' slipped quickly
away, each pleasant day passing too hastily
into to-morrow, Millicent thought.  The
ordering of each day had something of a routine,
beginning invariably with a gallop on horseback.
The way sometimes led across wet, hard beaches
where the horses' hoofs crushed, with a crisp
sound, the tiny sea-shells left by the receding
waves.  The tall roan which Millicent rode was
a young thoroughbred, with slender legs, a
proud, arching neck, and unclipped mane and
tail.  Mrs. Shallop had given the fine animal
to her guest; and Millicent, who had a magnetic
influence over all animals, easily controlled the
horse by word or touch.  The young people
usually paired off; Millicent riding beside
Graham, Barbara and Ferrara following, while
Mr. Shallop brought up the rear on a sturdy cob
whose character and strength were well
calculated to bear up the portly magnate.  Sometimes
they rode through the odorous woods,
where the air was heavy with spices, and melodious
with sweet bird-notes foreign to Millicent's
ears.  The tall and stately redwoods standing
straight and unbending in their close serried
ranks, seemed to her a noble symbol of the life
of an upright man, who looks fearlessly into
the wide heavens, raised far above the briers
which grow about his lesser brethren.

On their return from their ride, glowing with
the splendid exercise, breakfast was served;
sometimes in the pretty morning room, oftener
in a sheltered part of the wide veranda, from
whence they might look out upon the shadowy
woods stretching behind the house.  After this
meal, Mr. Shallop and Ferrara took the train
for San Francisco; and the hostess and Graham
disappeared into the temporary studio which
had been arranged for the artist.  The two girls
were left to amuse themselves.  Millicent, who
had brought her usual store of books, did not
open one of them, but moused about in the
library, finding many works quite new to her
and full of interest.  If her knowledge of Italian
and French literature was remarkable, her
ignorance of the English classics was stupendous.
Shakspeare alone was familiar to her among
the great ones.  The long rows of finely bound
books were mostly uncut and showed little
evidence of having been read, a copy of a lady's
fashion book, and a volume treating of the
manners of polite society, forming notable
exceptions to this rule.  At mid-day a
beach-wagon conveyed the young girls to the shining
sea-sands, and they indulged in the luxury of a
bath.  In the afternoon they took long drives,
or played lawn tennis with friends from the
hotel in the town.  The evenings were
sometimes spent on the long, cool veranda, oftener
on Mr. Shallop's stanch yacht, the "Golden
Hind."  She was a fine vessel several tons
heavier than her illustrious namesake, in which Sir
Francis Drake sailed along the coast of
California more than three centuries ago, and took
possession of the land as "New Albion," in the
name of good Queen Bess.

Pleasant days, full of incident and enjoyment,
filled with new impressions to Millicent, and
freighted with sunlight and merriment to all
the party.  No thought of the weather lent the
anxious uncertainty to plans which so often
to us in the East takes half the enjoyment from
anticipation.  From May to November in this
favored land the blue of the sky is unclouded,
save by gossamer white drifts of vapor, massed
into soft shapes and mystic outlines.  The sky
smiles from spring to laughing summer, and
the land lies steeped in sunshine through the
late autumn.

The wide white beach, with its row of bathing-houses
and little tents, was very attractive to
Millicent.  She sometimes sat in the warm sand
for hours, chatting with Barbara or making
friends with the bare-legged children, the
tireless architects in sand.  Finally, donning their
bathing-suits, they ran, hand in hand, over the
dry sands, across the wet space which the last
wave had darkened, through the white fringe of
the sea, into the cool green billows.

The last day of their visit had come, and the
morrow would see them on their way back to
San Rosario.  Millicent and Barbara had
prolonged their sea dip beyond their usual wont.
Never before had the water seemed so bracing
and delicious.  As there were twenty or thirty
bathers to keep her company, Millicent lingered
among the breakers, while Barbara regained the
shore.  She swam leisurely about, displacing
the clear water with her white arms and pretty,
small feet.  She suddenly became aware that a
swimmer was gaining on her from behind, and
her stroke instinctively quickened.  Millicent
swam as only the women of Venice can swim;
and the race between her and her unseen
pursuer bade fair to be hotly contested.  With
head high lifted from the waves which circled
caressingly about the smooth round throat,
knotting the tendril curls at the nape of the
neck, the girl kept steadily on her course
without turning her head to see who might be so
audacious as to follow her.  Strong as were
her strokes, she slowly lost ground; and finally
the water about her rippled with the strokes
of the man who was gaining.  Soon he had
caught up with her, and side by side they swam
for a space.  Then the victor spoke in a voice
well known to her, and the girl answered him
with a laugh which rang out fresh and crisp
as the sound of the wavelets.  Then she turned
her head and looked full at him as he moved
by her side, strong and graceful as a young merman.

"So, my nymph, you are at home in Father
Neptune's arms as well as in the embrace of the
great tree.  Which is your native element,
earth, air, or water?"

"I am amphibious."

"And which of your three elemental homes
do you like the best?"

"When I am dancing, the air; when I am
walking, dear Mother Earth; and when I swim,
the sea."

"When I paint you, it will be as I see you now,
triumphing over the waves as our great mother,
Aphrodite, triumphed over them before you."

"That compliment would go to my head
were it not mixed with so much water."

Then they both laughed, because the sky was
sapphire clear, and the sea beryl green; because
the golden sun warmed them with its kind rays;
because each was fair and good to look upon;
because, when they were together, winds blew
more softly, and sky and sea took on a more
tender hue where they melted at the horizon
into one ineffable kiss.  A pair of white-winged
gulls swept above them, shrieking their
love-notes hoarsely, while the white-armed girl and
the strong-limbed man breasted the waves
together, side by side.  Though lapped by the
cool water, Graham felt the warm influence
which folded about him like a cloak in
Millicent's presence.  When she grew tired the girl
turned upon her side and floated; while Graham
swam about her in little circles, first moving
like a shark on one side, with long, far-reaching
strokes, then swimming upon his back, and
finally beneath the waves, looking always at her
face seen dimly through the dark-green water.

After a space Millicent looked about to find
herself alone, far from the shore with its group
of bathers.  At first she fancied that her
companion must be swimming below the water as
he had done before; but, as the slow-passing
seconds went by, she realized that some ill must
have befallen him.  Stretching her arms above
her head, she dived straight and swift through
the clear water towards the pebbled bottom of
the ocean shining through the pellucid waters.
In that dim under-current she touched him,
stiff and cold, rising toward the surface, but
through no effort of his own helpless limbs.
In that terrified heart-beat of time she saw his
face set and white, with horror-stricken eyes
widely strained apart.  Into them she looked,
her own firing with hope and courage, and
giving a mute promise of rescue.  She seized
his rigid arm with her strong, small hands, and
they rose together to the surface.  The man
was as if paralyzed; and the girl for an instant
tried to support him, but, feeling such a strain
would soon out-wear her half-spent strength,
she cried,--

"Put your hand on my shoulder--so, and I
will swim below you."  Her voice was hoarse
and shrill as that of the screaming sea-gulls.
He could not speak, but looked toward the
shore as if he would have her save herself and
abandon him to his fate.

"No, no!" she cried, "I *will* save you;" and,
placing his hands on her shoulders, struck out
bravely toward the shore.  To reach it seemed
at first an easy thing, but the struggle proved a
terrible one, cruelly unequal, between the girl's
small strength, with the burden now added to
her own weight, and the waves grown hungry
for human prey.  Their babbling music now
was changed to Millicent's ears, and they
clamored greedily for her life, for that other life
which she was striving to snatch from their
cruel embrace.  Again and again the man would
loosen his hold.  She could not save him: why
should she die too, she was so young, so fair!
This he tried to tell her in gasping accents, but
she only gripped his hand more firmly and
placed it as before.  They should both live or
die.  Fate, which had been so cruel to her, had
cast their lots together for that day at least; and
death seemed sweeter by his side than life
without him.  Her brave spirit fainted not, though
her labored strokes grew slower and feebler.
Then she gave one great cry for help to those
who were so near them, and yet so unconscious
of their danger.  She heard their voices plainly,--the
mothers talking to romping children, whose
ringing laughter mocked her agony.  Was it
their death knell, this sound of sweet child-voices
that drowned her frenzied cry, and filled the ears
of the strong men and women, keeping out the
fainting accents which pleaded for his life and
her own?  Once again, and this time with a
thrilling vibration of despair, the woman's voice
rang out across the waves.  It was freighted
with her last hope; it was the latest sound her
gasping lungs could utter.  Could love and
hope of life outshriek the murmur of the waves,
the shrill note of the sea-mews, the noisy prattle
of the infants?  The man, long since despairing,
groaned: it seemed murder to him that his
helpless weight should drag down the fair, brave
young creature to her grave; his death agony
was made more bitter by the thought.  The
girl's determination never wavered, and her little
strength was not wasted in a longer struggle;
she managed to keep his face above the waves,
but now only held her own, and had ceased to
make the slightest progress.  She could now no
longer see the bathers.  Had her cry been heard?
O waves! be merciful and still your clamor!
White-winged partners, cry no more your
mocking love notes!  Sweet mothers, list no longer to
your children's laughter, for there is other sound
which must reach your fond ears and chill your
warm hearts with horror!  For a moment there
grew a great silence as of listening, and then
over the water came answering cries of women
agonized with sympathy, came the hearty voices
of strong men saying, "Keep up, keep up! for
help is coming, it is close beside you."  Ah,
God! it is in time, for the two white faces, lying
so close in the green waters, have but just
vanished from sight; they still shine through the
waves but a little space beneath the surface.
Strong helping arms raise the nerveless bodies
from the waves that murmur sullenly, bear them
safely to the shore with its shining white sands,
and, last, gently loose the maiden's white hands,
clinging still, though all unconsciously, to the
man whose life she has saved.  Weeping women
gather about them, lying there so still and fair
upon the white beach; frightened children look
curiously at the half-drowned figures of the man
and the woman.  Still are they man and woman,
and not yet fallen to that terrible neuter of
death, wherein age and sex are not, where serf
and queen are equals.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VII.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "A flame!  Her clear soul's essence slips,
   |  To steep for aye with mine, from her fast-whitening lips!"

.. vspace:: 2

Several days passed before these two who,
hand in hand, had looked death in the face, and
felt his chill breath freezing up the current of
their lives, again saw one another.  Graham,
after twenty-four hours, was able to be about,
looking pale and ill.  The congestive chill which
had overcome him was the result of his having
plunged into the sea while very much
over-heated.  The water at San Real, and indeed all
along the Pacific coast, is very much colder
than at the Eastern watering places of a
corresponding latitude, where the genial influence
of the Gulf Stream is felt.  His vigorous constitution
quickly threw off the effects of the terrible
experience; but three long days and nights wore
themselves out before Millicent's light step
sounded on the stairs.  Mrs. Shallop and
Barbara were sitting alone at the luncheon table,
when the latter caught the sound of the
well-known footfall; she hastily left the room, and
running up the stairs passed her arm about the
feeble girl, supporting her into the room.

"Why did you not tell me that you were
coming?  Do you think it prudent, dear?"

"Yes, I wanted to come, and the doctor said
I should do whatever I fancied," she answered
a little fretfully; then she smiled, with that
flashing of the eyes that always won her pardon for
any little sin.  It was a strange coincidence,
Barbara thought, that Millicent should have
come downstairs for the first time on the
morning when Graham had gone to San Francisco.
It was his first absence since the beginning of
their visit.  Why should she avoid meeting the
man whose life she had saved at the risk of her
own?  Graham had every day begged to see
her, but Millicent had not felt equal to the
interview.  Barbara was genuinely puzzled; but
then Barbara was often puzzled by Millicent.
During the days just past her gentle care and
nursing had brought her much nearer to
Millicent than she had been before.  In those long
mornings when Barbara, in a full, deep voice,
read to her from her favorite books, Millicent
had time to think more about her new friend;
and the more she thought about her the better
she liked the sweet, sound, womanly nature,
with its domestic instincts, and maternal care
of all creatures sick or sorry.  One morning, as
the invalid lay upon her couch, while Barbara's
gentle hands plaited her long hair in thick
strands, she said, somewhat abruptly,--

"Barbara, why have you not married?"

"What an odd question!"

"If you knew what a charming wife you would
make, you would think the question a most
natural one.  I suppose you have been in love?"

"I suppose so," jestingly.

"Bah! talk seriously for a moment with me.
Why do you not marry Ferrara?  The poor
fellow is perfectly pathetic in his devotion to you.
You know, Barbara, that matrimony would suit
you delightfully; there is nothing so becoming
to a woman of your type as the background of
a home of her own.  There you would shine
like Jessica's candle in this naughty world."

"I have never thought about it in the way
of a background."

"Of course you never did; but, Barbara, do
you think you could fall in love again?"

"Who knows?"

"Then I know that you have never been in
love at all, *ma belle*--oh, I forgot, and have
broken my vow to speak English pure and
simple.  Well, never mind, now we will talk
about my broth, for I am very hungry.  I feel
like little Rosalba in the 'Rose and the Ring,'
when she went about crying, 'Dutess Tountess,
my royal highness vely hungy.'"

Long confidences had followed this conversation;
and Millicent listened to Barbara's account
of a childish romance with that deep interest
which women all feel in the heart experiences
of their sisters.  Such sympathy is born in the
feminine breast before the power of loving
awakes there, and dies not when experience has
brought nothing to it but grief and bitterness.
The veriest chit of a girl of ten will read a
love-story if she be allowed, while her brothers are
inventing ingenious instruments for the torture
of cats and nurses.  The deafest grandam will
listen with keen interest to her favorite
grand-daughter's confession of love, and will be
careful not to chill young hopes with her own sad
memories.  All those who have loved truly,
with that love which outlasts grief, death, and
human passion, which smiles at the cruelest
neglect, which, like the love of the Most High,
passeth all understanding, have sympathy and
kindly interest for those who are in love.  That
"all the world loves a lover," is the truest of
all sayings.

As soon as they were alone, Millicent told
Barbara that she was anxious to return to the
Ranch the following day.  Since her first
meeting with John Graham, her life had danced away
through bright hours passed in his company, in
remembering past interviews, in looking forward
to future meetings.  In the long days when she
lay weak and helpless, slowly recovering from
the terrible drain on forces, nervous and muscular,
she had thought long and deeply; and now
that she was well, she did not wish to meet
Graham, and avoided his presence.  She realized,
as she had not done before, that she deeply
and irrevocably loved this man, whose name six
months ago had been unknown to her.  Whether
this understanding of what was in her own heart
came upon her in one broad flash of quickened
intelligence, when she lay half swallowed up by
the jaws of death, still clasping him with feeble
hands, or if, in the quiet hours of introspection
which followed that awful moment, she gradually
learned the truth, it would be hard to say, but
that she now knew it, was indubitable.  The
fact that the man she loved should be indebted
to her for his life was a distasteful one.  Not
through gratitude did she wish to attract him;
the very thought of it was galling to her.  She
loved him, and longed, with the deepest power
in her soul, to arouse in his breast that
answering passion, which, like a deep bass chord,
mingles with the sweet treble song of woman's
love, their harmony making the one perfect
note to which the keystone of the universe
trembles sympathetically.  Sweet as was the
thought that her strength had sufficed for them
both, she mourned the chance which had made
her hand the rescuing one.  Love that springs
from gratitude or from pity is earth-born and
earth-bound; she would have none of it; it was as
if she had a claim upon him for that gift, which
if not freely given is valueless.  So, with a
shyness new to her, she avoided meeting Graham;
and the night of his return she sought her room
again and did not appear until the following
morning.  If Graham did not know all, he was
ready enough to understand that she avoided
his thanks.

Mrs. Shallop passed the last evening of her
guests' visit sitting with Miss Almsford,
answering her many eager questions of the strange, wild
days when law and order were not in the broad
golden land.  It seemed almost incredible to
Millicent, and yet she felt it to be true, that the
wife of the mining king regretted the past days
of poverty and simplicity.  The hard-earned crust,
shared with a husband whose every thought was
known to her, had tasted sweeter than the
luxuries of a table at which she often sat alone, or
with a partner absorbed in thoughts and
enterprises in which she had no part.  Her children
had then been entirely hers; now they were far
distant,--the boy at an English college, the girl
in a French conventual school, whence they
would both return grown too clever and proud
to care for her simple-hearted companionship.
What mattered it that she had toiled day and
night to buy them food and clothing, had worn
out her poor body and dulled her simple mind
with anxious overstrain and grinding labor?
Would they thank her for it now?  When, a
year before, she had visited these adored
children, she had felt the distance between them
and herself.  If her son had not been ashamed
of his poor mother, it was only because his
heart was not quite weaned from hers.  The
girl was gentle and kind; but the pitying care
with which she brought her conversation to the
level of her mother's understanding was all too
obvious to the sensitive woman, whose nervous
strength had been shattered in the hard fight
which she had made all those years ago, to keep
the breath of life in their little bodies.  Half
her life had been passed at the wash-tub, half in
the drawing-room; the transition had been too
sudden for a person of her temperament.  The
soapsuds, which used to flash the splintered rays
of light from her hands, were more appropriate
to them than the diamonds with which they
now glittered.  Poor woman, the extremes of
fortune were both known to her.

Though their visit had been a delightful one,
Millicent was anxious to return to the Ranch; she
longed for the quiet, refined atmosphere of the
place, with its simple comforts, doubly attractive
after this experience of the luxurious but
inappropriate house of Mr. Patrick Shallop.  There
is a certain fitness in things; and the ex-miner,
living in the palace of the railroad king, was less
at home than England's monarch could have
been in the cowherd's hovel.  Millicent felt the
social *malaise* which arises from the incongruity
of persons with their surroundings.  Graham,
interested in his portrait, which was coming on
famously, was not easily affected by a personal
atmosphere to which he was indifferent; while
Barbara and Ferrara, used to a similar condition
of things, accepted it without question.

The morning of the last day of their visit
dawned bright and clear; and Millicent, standing
on the terrace, thought the wide view had never
seemed so beautiful before.  She was taking
farewell of that sea which had so nearly swallowed
her young life with all its hopes and fears.
The waves murmured with a gentle sound, as if
quite oblivious of their late rapacity.  She
went out into the thick pine woods behind the
house, and stood for the last time among the
great redwoods, which to her were so wonderful,
and which everybody else accepted as a matter
of course.  A well-known footstep behind her
on the dry leaves caused the slight pink tinge
which the morning breeze had brought to her
cheek to fade suddenly; the blood seemed
rushing from every vein back to its source, and
her heart stopped its pulsations for a moment.
She did not turn her head, but stood quite silent,
waiting for Graham's first word.  When he was
at her side, she felt her hand suddenly caught
in a warm pressure which sent the blood rushing
through the arteries again, tingling painfully
in every fibre of her body, and loosening the
cold silence of the heart, which beat out a quick
answer to the words of greeting.  They were
but few and very earnest, the words of a brave
man glad to be beholden to so fair a woman
for his life.  Was it gratitude that made his
voice tremble, that lighted his grave eyes with
a smile?

She answered him sweetly and seriously, with
a steady voice and calm eyes, though the
rose-flush flooded and ebbed from her cheek and
brow.  The man did not trouble himself to
analyze the feelings which gave rise to the fleeting
blushes; he was too full of his own enthusiasm
to notice how it affected its object.  He spoke
as he felt and thought of the woman standing
there so full of life and beauty,--only in the
light of his relation to her.  He knew how he
felt towards her, and told her so with admiring
frankness; of her feelings towards himself he
never stopped to think.  His was an egotistic
nature, as are those of all strong men whose
personality stamps the age in which they live.
Weaker men and women receive the imprint of
their time; only the few strong ones leave their
images impressed when the soft clay of the
present is transmitted into the unmalleable
granite of the past.

They walked together for a time, Graham full
of anxious inquiry for her health, and Millicent
happy in his anxiety.  When the artist learned
of the proposed departure, he strongly opposed
it, urging a longer stay.  When he found that
the young ladies had decided to leave San Real,
he announced his intention of accompanying
them.  Mrs. Shallop shortly afterward joined
the pair and handed Millicent a newspaper, at
which the girl looked quite indifferently until
her eyes caught her own name in large letters
at the head of a column.  She quickly read the
article, which proved to be a highly sensational
account of the rescue of Graham.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: small

   A FIGHT WITH DEATH!--Heroism of a Young Girl!--John
   Graham rescued from Drowning by Beautiful Millicent
   Almsford!--The Personal Appearance of the
   Heroine!--Early History of the Lucky Man!

.. vspace:: 2

These headings preceded the two-column
article at which Graham laughed contemptuously,
and which drew hot tears from Millicent's
eyes.  She had never before seen her own name
in print, and the freedom with which the Anglo-Saxon
press deals with the affairs of ladies who
have no claim on the public interest was
unknown to her.  She only felt that her name was
being spoken by people who never had heard
of her; that the most sacred and awful hour of
her life was revealed to the world; and that the
event of which she had hardly spoken, and of
which she barely dared to think, was now
familiar to thousands of indifferent readers.  The
news had in fact been telegraphed to one of
the large New York papers, and in the course
of a week filtered down through the smaller
organs of that city to the suburban press, and
was read and forgotten by the careless public
throughout the length and breadth of this
enlightened land.  To Mrs. Shallop and Barbara,
accustomed to the vagaries of American
journalism, the state of mind into which Millicent
was thrown by the article in the San Francisco
"Roarer," was entirely surprising.  It was
without doubt annoying, but they had both become
so accustomed to seeing their own names and
those of their friends in the columns of the daily
journals, that Millicent's horror and indignation
seemed disproportionate to the cause.  This
utter disrespect of the privacy of life which is
the right of all men and women leading peaceable
lives, breaking no law of the civil or social
statutes, is the crying sin of modern journalism.
When they are charged with this, the journals
very tritely retort that "social news" pays
better than any other class of matter; that its
insertion is more often prized and sought after by the
individuals mentioned than resented by them;
that much of the personal news is actually
furnished by the individuals whom it most
concerns; and that they but supply the demand of
their readers.  It would be well for them to
remember that to pander to the public taste is
not the highest object open to journalism; to
elevate that taste were a task more deserving
of commendation, and less unworthy of good
printer's ink and paper.

The next mail brought two letters for
Millicent; one from a well-known photographer
asking her for an early sitting, and begging that
he might have the sole privilege of photographing
her.  The other communication was a civil
letter from the editor of a weekly journal, asking
for a slight autobiographical sketch from the
hand of the heroine of San Real.  In the course
of the morning a reporter from the California
"Bugle," a rival sheet, arrived and requested an
interview with Miss Almsford and Mr. Graham,
from which to compile an article on "The
Rescuer and the Rescued."  Millicent's eyes flashed
angrily when the import of the small printed
visiting-card bearing the name of this nineteenth-century
inquisitor was explained to her.  She
was heard to murmur, beneath her breath, some
Italian words highly inimical to the smart young
person who was taking the opportunity to
examine Mrs. Shallop's drawing-room with an eye
to future "notes."  She was astonished when
Graham quietly lighted a cigarette, and asking
that the gentleman might be shown into the
smoking-room, joined him there.

"Why does he not beat him?" she cried.
"If I were a man I should thrust him from the
house."

"And be held up to the public as a brutal
assassin?" laughed Barbara.  "No, no, my dear,
let Mr. Graham alone; he knows best how to
manage the visitor.  It never does to insult
those gentlemen; they are dangerous enemies,
and have the public's ear into which to pour all
their grievances.  Our friend will draw the fire
on himself, I fancy, in order to spare you.
News the news-fiend must have; he will make
it himself if it be not provided for him.  Poor
thing! he must live, after all, as well as you or
I.  It is not his fault that he is obliged to
interview people; it must be a very disagreeable
profession."

Thus kindly and with wide sympathy did
Barbara Deering judge all men and women;
ay, and reporters too, together with babies,
Chinamen, and other unfortunate works of God.
Graham returned in a quarter of an hour, having
appeased his visitor with the aid of a good cigar
and a champagne cocktail, compounded by the
careful hand of the solemn-faced butler.

Millicent was still flushed and excited, all
Barbara's arguments having failed to soothe her
nerves.  Graham, with one sentence, banished
the angry dint from her white forehead and
brought a smile back to her face.  The hour of
the last good-bys had arrived; and the guests
took leave of their kind hostess, with promises to
repeat their visit before long.  Little Mrs. Shallop
really cried at parting with Millicent, to
whom she had become greatly attached.  She
sighed as the carriage disappeared from view,
bearing its freight of young people with their
vivid lives and strong interests.  When she went
back to her great lonely drawing-room, with its
splendid furnishings, she realized what a fitting
frame it had made for the two pretty young
guests, and how unsuitable it was to her simple
tastes.  The house was dreary without their
joyous voices and quick footsteps.

Just after sundown the travellers reached the
San Rosario station, where Hal was awaiting
them in the great red-painted wagon.  The two
sturdy mules were supplemented by old Sphinx
harnessed before them, making what is known
as a spiked team.

"Hail! the conquering Heroine comes! sound
the trumpets, beat the drums!" cried the
irrepressible young rancher.  "How is our most
heroic Princess, and will she deign to enter the
triumphal car which her humble slave has
prepared for her?"

They all laughed; but, through all the lively
nonsense which he reeled off to them on the
way to the house, Millicent felt that he had been
really moved by what had occurred.  The grip
which he gave her hand spoke a volume of
approval; and the loud clap on the shoulder with
which he greeted Graham expressed more than
a dozen sentences of rhetorical eloquence could
have done.  The antics of the unicorn team
were extremely diverting; and these, with the
absurdities which Hal perpetrated at every step
of the road, brought the quartette to the house
door "in a state of merriment bordering on
idiocy," as he expressed it.  Mrs. Deering, with
her sweet motherly greeting, made their return
seem a home-coming to Millicent and Graham,
as well as to Barbara, the tall daughter of the
house.  Her hospitality was so genuinely of the
heart that the recipient of it was made to feel
that it was simply his due, and that his
presence was as great a favor to the hostess as her
kindness was to him.

Graham was warmly urged to stay over night,
but he resisted the temptation of remaining.
Neither Millicent's voice nor Millicent's eyes
had supplemented the invitation.

As they paced the path together, her hand
lying on his arm, Graham told Mrs. Deering, in
a low voice, of all that had happened since their
departure,--of the pleasant days with their
excursions; of the new impressions made on
Millicent by all that she saw; of the friends whom he
had met, remembering all the kind messages
which had been sent to the gentle *châtelaine* of
San Rosario; of Barbara's sweetness and
Mrs. Shallop's hospitality; of the progress he had
made on the portrait of his hostess; of the
thousand-and-one little items of news so welcome to
people leading a life of quiet isolation.  Then in
graver tones he spoke of his great peril and
Millicent's bravery, of the strange thoughts
which had crossed his mind in that last moment
of consciousness, how her face as well as his
mother's had been revealed to him as in a vision.
All this was listened to with that perfect
sympathy that is always ready to receive confidences,
and which forbears to claim them when they
are not spontaneously given.  Blessed among
women are these rare ones to whom motherless
sons can confide every hope and disappointment,
sure of a quick sympathy, and in whom the
mighty instinct of maternity is not satisfied in
ministering to their own flesh and blood, but
springs forth to succor all who are suffering for
the gentle mother love.

It was late when these two said good-night,
and Graham went to find the others to take
farewell.  Barbara and Hal were singing duets.
They had neither of them seen Millicent, and
fancied that she must have gone to her room.
With a sense of cold disappointment and injury
the young man left the house.  As he passed by
the corner of the piazza he fancied he saw a
figure standing close in the shadow of an angle.  He
stopped; the figure remained motionless; through
the heavy drapery of the vines he could not tell
whether it was a person or merely a shadow.

"Who is it?" he asked in a low voice.  No
answer came, but through the stillness of the
night he thought he heard the sound of a
quick-drawn breath.  Putting the honeysuckle aside
he stepped on the piazza, and found that his
eyes had not deceived him.  Millicent stood
beneath the rose vines.  When she saw that she
was discovered she spoke with a light laugh:

"I did not want you to see me, for I have
been unsociable this evening, and hoped you
would all think I had gone to bed."

"Is it not damp for you to be sitting out-of-doors?"
he asked, with a voice grown deep and tender.

"Oh, no!  I am quite used to it.  What a
wonderful night!  I think I never saw the stars
so brilliant."

The girl seated herself on the edge of the
piazza, Graham placing a cushion under her
feet and taking his place at her side.  It was a
perfectly still evening, the only sound being the
far-away tinkle of a sheep bell.  There was a
moment of dangerous silence, which Millicent
broke a little nervously, speaking of Italy, of
Mrs. Shallop and their late visit, of Hal's
irresistible wit, of any one of the subjects which
danced through her brain.  She was afraid to
be silent, and feared yet longed for what might
be said if she left too long a pause.  The spell
which kept Graham at her side when he should
have been half way to his lonely tower, began
to assert itself over the woman, always the last
to yield.  The man had long since abandoned
himself to that mysterious state of being in
which every nerve of brain and every pulse of
heart yearns for sympathy and reaches out
toward its counterpart.  At last she was silent,
the last commonplace dying half spoken on her
trembling lips.  Silence now in all the land;
only the sound of heart-beats which each felt
must reach the other's ears.  Stars more tender
than those of heaven shone close to Graham
through the blue-black night; a breath sweeter
than the wind stirring the honeysuckle touched
his cheek.  At length that silence, more musical
than sweetest harmony, was broken by a low,
deep voice.

"May I kiss you?" said the voice.

What was the faint sound which the night
wind wafted to his ear?  Was it the whirring of
the humming birds whose nest hung close by?
Was it the far-off silver ripple of the brooklet,
or the cadence of the distant sheep-bell?  Was
it that sweeter sound than note of mating bird,
of falling water, or of faint bell-chime,--was it a
loving woman's "Yes"?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Oui, les premiers baisers, oui, les premiers serments
   |  Que deux êtres mortels échangerent sur terre
   |  Ce fut au pied d' un arbre effeuillé par les vents,
   |  Sur un roc en poussière."

.. vspace:: 2

When he awoke the next morning, John Graham
gave a deep sigh.  His dreams had been so
sweet that no reality could equal their
happiness.  As he sat on the edge of his narrow bed
disentangling what was real from what was
dream-born in his thoughts, his eye fell upon
the knot of roses which he had taken from
Millicent's hair the night before, and had clasped to
his lips as he fell asleep.  They were faded now,
but they still gave out a strong perfume.  His
cheek had been wounded by a thorn, but he
kissed the wilted posies, for all that, placed the
little bouquet tenderly in an exquisite Venetian
vase, and then bounded down the stairway of
his tower and across the narrow space which led
to a clear deep pool where a crystal stream fell
in a white cataract to a rocky basin.  The
foam-bubbles danced joyously in the clear dark
waters, and the plashing of the fall had a sound of
a sweet deep voice which had grown very dear
to him.  A mossy bank, shaded by two drooping
trees, sloped to the edge of this natural bath,
refreshing enough to have tempted Diana from
the chase.  As Graham plunged into the cool
waters he shouted out a verse of a song he had
learned long ago.  Attracted by the sound of
his voice, French John laid down his axe beside
the young tree he was about to fell, and came
down to the pool where Graham was vigorously
tossing about the bright water.  The old
wood-cutter looked at the young man as if the sight
did him good.  He responded to the uproarious
greeting which the artist shouted to him, by his
usual silent nod of the head.  Had words been
worth their weight in diamond dust, the old
soldier could not have been more chary of
wasting them, but the look in his faded blue eyes
was gentle and full of admiration.  He had had
a son of whom he had lost all trace since its
infancy.  If the boy had lived he would have
been about Graham's age, and it was the man's
fancy that he would have resembled his patron.
He imagined he could trace in the splendidly
modelled arms and legs and the strong, perfectly
proportioned torso of the bather the shape into
which the baby contours he remembered so
well must have developed.  Graham had by
this time gained the green turf and stood
shaking the water out of his thick hair, drawing
quick panting breaths, meanwhile, and springing
about to warm himself, with the grace and
strength of a leopard.  The old Frenchman
gave a deep sigh as he looked at him.

"Yes; Hector certainly must resemble this
young man," he murmured, as he wetted his
hard hands, and, grasping the handle of his axe,
smote heavily at the stem of a young pine-tree.
Graham rapidly made his toilet in the open air.
The plunge in the clear cold water had rather
stimulated than expended the electric, nervous
force which ran through his veins, quickening
the life-blood in its flow.  He felt ten years
younger since yesterday morning.  His thirty
years and the gravity they had brought to him
had shrunk to twenty.  As he looked up at his
tower he sang aloud a snatch of an old song which
had been often on his lips in those happy,
careless days in the *Rue d' Enfer*,--words which he
had painted over the tiny grate in the cramped
apartment under the leads, where he had suffered
from heat all summer, and shivered all winter:

   |  Dans un grenier qu' on est bien
   |  A vingt ans, à vingt ans!
   |

He would have liked to dance.  Had his years
in truth been but twenty, he would have yielded
to the temptation.  He would gladly have
thrown his arms about the old Frenchman, for
lack of another confidant, and have told him the
cause of his happiness.  But, after all, this reflex
of youth could not entirely melt the reserve of
manhood from him; he wore his thirty years
lightly indeed, but could not shake them off.

"Give me your axe, John; I know something
of your woodman's craft; let me show you how
easily I can fell this young tree."

He took the tool from the woodcutter, and,
whirling the sharp edge in the air, laid it at the
root of the tree with a ringing blow.

"It appears in truth that monsieur 'ave
'andled an axe before."

"Surely, John.  I once spent a summer with
some friends of mine, who lived in a forest in
Brittany; they were *sabotiers*."

"Monsieur is jesting?"

"Not in the least.  I not only can fell a
tree,--clumsily enough, be it confessed,--but if I
had the tools I could shape you a pair of *sabots*,
as good ones as you could buy for ten sous at
Quimper; that is your town, I think?"

He talked in short, jerky sentences between
the strokes, while the white splinters flew about
him like a hail-storm.  After a few moments the
knack which he seemed at first to have forgotten
came back to him.  The smell of the bruised
bark was aromatic; the death-sigh of the young
branches was musical as they trembled for the
last time together, reaching out to touch their
sister trees in solemn leave-taking.  Their sigh
was now drowned in the groan of the swaying tree.

"Take care, monsieur, take care; it is about
to fall," cried the Frenchman.

His warning was a timely one.  Graham, so
long unused to the exercise of the craft, had not
noticed how deeply he had cut into the stem.
The straight tree seemed to hesitate, tossing its
branches helplessly heavenward, and then with
a creaking sound crashed through the surrounding
underbrush, and with a dull thud measured its
slender length upon the earth.  For a moment
its branches shook convulsively, and then all
was quiet.  It seemed as if all nature paused at
the fall of so fair a thing: the birds were silent
in the thicket; the babble of the water-fall grew
faint; and the wood creatures stirred not in their
burrows.  A mighty breeze crept through the
forest, rustling the surrounding trees, wailing
through the open gap as if in requiem, and a
light cloud floated over the face of the sun,
throwing its shadowy pall on the spot.

"That was well done, monsieur."

And, at the sound of the man's voice, the
cloud floated by and the sun shone out once
more, the wood birds took up their song again,
the squirrel in the hollow of the white oak went
on cracking her nut, and the brief mourning was over.

That man must feel himself indeed beloved,
who fancies that the world will pause as long
beside his grave as does the forest at the fall of
one of its children.

Not until the branches had been lopped off
and the long stem cut into lengths, did Graham
cease his labor.  The exercise did him good, and
gave him an appetite for the breakfast which old
John served him in the open air.  He declared
that the coffee was better than could be had at
the *Café de Paris*; and assured John that neither
Paris nor Vienna could produce such bread as
that which the old man had baked in some
mysterious manner in an oven of his own
construction, made of flat stone sunk in the ground.
Graham remembered that he had somewhere in
the tower a bottle of rare old wine, which he
sent John to fetch.

"Bring my glass and your tin cup, John."

He needed sympathy, he who had lived for
years without asking man or woman to share his
joys or sorrows; he felt a new need in himself
for human companionship; and the silent old
fellow who did his bidding was the only soul to
whom he could look for it.  The ice which had
encased his heart was broken; and instead of
sternly demanding from his fellow-men honor,
truth, and sincerity, he embraced the whole
world in a warm, unquestioning love and
sympathy.  Yesterday he was a man who labored
for his kind; to-day he was content to love them.
Yesterday he was a reformer; to-day he was a
philanthropist.  The henchman returning with
the wine, Graham filled the crystal goblet and the
humble cup to the brim, and together these two
denizens of the balmy forest drank to the new
day which had dawned on the young man's life.
After the long, black night which for months
obscures the face of nature in the far northern
land, the first rising of the sun touches the
hearts of men with a deeper, more profound joy
than the dwellers in a temperate zone can well
understand.  So was the light of this new love
more glorious a thousand-fold to the man in
whose life there had so long been darkness, than
if it had arisen in a heart unacquainted with
grief.  In the first flush of happiness, his whole
nature rebelled against the joyless life he had
been leading; his work lost its attraction for
him, and he could not have painted a stroke that
day if his whole future reputation had depended
upon it.  The new impulse had swung him far
out of his accustomed orbit; that there might be
a rebound, he never for an instant fancied.

He spent an hour in ransacking his tower
to find the most beautiful thing he possessed
to carry to Millicent.  He wanted to go to her
with something in his hand that might in some
measure express the tide of generous feeling that
flooded his whole nature.  He still had a score
of those treasures, souvenirs of his European
residence, of which the greater part had found
their way to the shelves and cabinets of his
friends' houses.  He spread them out before
him on his one table, ruthlessly pushing aside
paints, brushes, books, and drawing chalks, in a
hubbub of disorder.  With an intense interest he
looked them all through.  He had almost
decided upon a rare Etruscan coin which he had
seen roll from the palm of an exhumed skeleton,
when his eye was caught by a tiny Tanagrine
figure.  The exquisite modelling of this clay toy,
instinct with the beauty which pervaded every
detail of Greek life, made it a more appropriate
gift.  The miniature woman was as truly
proportioned as the Milo herself, and as surely
constructed according to that greatest law of art
that the world has yet seen evolved, the Greek,
wherein are welded together the real and the
ideal.  A third article now struck his fancy as
more appropriate than either of these for his first
gift to Millicent.  It was a crown of olive leaves
of the purest gold, which might have bound
Helen's brow.  It had lain amidst the dust of
eons which covers Troy with its pall; and now,
in the nineteenth century, it was to serve as
the gift of a Californian lover to his mistress.
Surely, never before had the precious leaves
encircled so fair a head as that which they were
now destined to adorn.

Among the many sins which had been laid at
Graham's door by friend or foe, the vice of
foppery was missing.  That minute attention to
every detail of dress, which is found as often
in man as in woman, had no place in his busy
life.  He was, however, always neatly dressed;
and the prosaic fashions of our time were
modified as much as possible in his wardrobe,
especially while he inhabited the forest.  On this
occasion, instead of one absent look in his small
mirror, merely to ascertain if his hair were
properly parted and his cravat neatly tied, a full hour
was given to the process of dressing.  Every
suit of clothes, and each possible combination
of the garments which his wardrobe afforded,
were carefully considered.  When at last the
decision was made, the vest needed a button, which
the artist laboriously attached to the garment.
Taking a coarse linen thread strong enough for
a halter, he made the button fast, taking several
turns of the thread about its eye, as if he were
belaying a rope.  His cravat occupied him fully
a quarter of an hour.  He must have brushed
his hair at least half a dozen times.  He caught
sight of his anxious face in the mirror, just as he
was settling his cravat for the last time, and burst
into a peal of laughter at his own dandyism.  At
the foot of the tower his sturdy mustang Tasso
stood ready saddled.  French John had given an
extra polish to the sleek gray coat, bright enough
to reflect the silver-studded Mexican bridle.  A
pair of red cockades, set at the ears of the beast,
were made from flowers yielded by the small
garden patch behind the woodcutter's cabin, where
he raised flowers and vegetables for his patron
and himself.  The tall cock gave a condescending
crow of approval as Graham mounted his
horse; while the three cats sunning themselves
near by hunched their backs at him, as if to
express their disapproval of his idleness.  It was
still early in the afternoon, and it was not his
wont to sally forth until the shadows were long.
Where could he be going? they asked one of the
other, purring inquisitively together like a group
of women-folk over a cup of afternoon tea.  Of
all his brute friends, Tasso alone knew whither
his master was going; he snorted scornfully at
cats and cock, and, shaking his head playfully,
sped over the bridle path with flying feet, as if
conscious of the eyes that were watching for
him, the ears that were strained to catch the
first faint echo of his hoofs as they flashed over
the stony orchard road.

Those sweet eyes had not closed since they
had last looked into Graham's; that white form
had known no rest since it had slipped from
his arms.  The night, which had brought to him
such peaceful dreams, was fraught with bitter
memories to Millicent.  She had paced her room
through the long hours.  No longer a half-yielding,
shrinking maiden, but a woman, full of tears,
before whom some great sorrow, long stifled,
had risen up again.  Was her nature then
two-fold?  While she was with other people,
Millicent seemed a strong, self-reliant woman, pure
and cold, with quick intellectual sympathies, and
strong opinions and convictions.  When in the
society of the man she loved, his influence
unfolded the closed petals of her heart as the sun
kisses back the white leaves of the daisy, and
uncovers its great golden centre to the eyes of
all men.  A new warmth shone from her eyes,
and softened her silver voice.  An unwonted
shyness made her shrinking and timid under his
gaze.  A new life was born within her, so much
stronger and more intense than any that she had
ever known, that her past existence paled before
it as the luminous circle of a night-lamp fades
before the strong rays of morning.  But when
she was alone....

Whatever her sombre thoughts had been, they
were banished before she next met her lover.
When she learned that he had come, she longed
to fly from him out into the dim reaches of the
forest, where he had told her half in jest that
they had lived and loved before man's time
began; when nymphs and dryads danced
together in the shade of the oak-trees; when Pan
reigned, and the earth was young.  If she could
have seen him in her own sanctum, where the
light was softened by the dull green hanging of
the wall, where the air was warm from the
ever-flaming fire, and sweet with the spices burning
in a great sea-shell, she would not have greatly
cared; but the stereotyped drawing-room, with its
blank white walls, was no place for their greeting.
She went down the stairway and stood a
moment before Graham; then, as he advanced
towards her as if about to speak, she glided swiftly
from the room across the hall and out into the
sunlight.

Barbara, standing near by, scattering corn to a
flock of tame doves which fluttered about her,
laughed as the light figure flitted by, with bare
head, and delicate silken draperies fit only to
rustle over soft carpets.  Barbara laughed
pleasantly, cheerily calling over her shoulder to her
mother, who sat indoors,--

"Look at Millicent racing with her own shadow."

"'T is a substantial shadow, Bab, but otherwise
the simile 's good," said Hal, as he passed
by on his way to the dairy.

And Barbara looked again, and looking sighed.
Another figure had sped by her, down the orchard
road towards the wood,--the figure of a man,
pursuing the flying girl, with kindled face and
fleet steps.  She threw her last handful of grain
to the circling doves, went into the stiff
drawing-room, mechanically set straight the disordered
chairs and drew down a shade where the light
fell too hotly upon a breadth of carpet.  She
paused before a mirror and looked at her own
pretty face clouded by a pain she would not
explain.  More than one lover had sued for
her hand, earnestly and tenderly, but she had
listened to no suit.  No man had ever
pursued her with fleet steps and sparkling eyes, no
man had ever brought that expression of
half-shamed happiness to her face which had made
Millicent look just now like a child racing with
her own shadow.

In the forest Graham found her standing
breathless beneath an oak-tree, whose branches
had caught her gown and forced her to stay her
flight.

"Again under that terrible oak; but I shall
not lose you this time.  Say that you will not
vanish in his jealous arms."

"He opens them to me no longer; he offers
me no refuge now."

"And I stand waiting for you, and hold out
my hand for yours.  Not for a dance now do I
ask it, but for a happy walk which shall end
only with our lives.  Will you put your hand in
mine?"

For answer a little warm palm creeps into
his broad fingers; and the oak-tree sighs a
blessing on the betrothal of which he is the only
witness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "And in the forest delicate clerks, unbrowned,
   |  Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds.
   |  Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
   |  That circled freshly in their forest dress
   |  Made them to boys again."

.. vspace:: 2

The life of John Graham had been one wherein
the sorrowful days far outnumbered the joyous
ones.  His youth had been saddened by the
reverses and griefs which had pursued his parents
with a relentless persistence.  His home life
had not been a happy one.  In the large family
of brothers and sisters there had been a
meeting and clashing of strong, positive characters
and opposing wills.  An intense family pride
was the one bond which united them.  This
sentiment, almost amounting to a passion, made the
members cling closely to one another when there
was little of sympathy to make a sweeter bond.
Graham's parents had moved to California, from
the Eastern town where they were both born,
while he was still an infant.  The first sixteen
years of his life had been spent on the Pacific
coast.  At this age he was sent eastward to pursue
his studies.  The youth had already determined
on devoting himself to art.  The years passed
at the famous New England college were very
busy ones.  The painful economies by which his
beloved mother defrayed his college expenses
were well known to the young man, and he held
himself responsible to that dear and honored
parent for every hour of his time.  His active
mind eagerly grasped such fruits of knowledge
as were offered by that garden of learning, and
his career in the university fully repaid the
sacrifices which it had entailed.  During all this time
he never for an instant relinquished his fixed
determination to become a painter.  In the leisure
hours when his companions were amusing themselves
according to their several tastes, Graham
was always found at his easel.  Some wiseacre
once suggested to the young man that Greek
and Latin were expensive acquirements, likely to
prove useless to a painter.

"And if I were to be a shoemaker, I should
make better shoes for having studied the
classics," was his reply to this admonition.

He had not been among the popular men of
his class, being very poor in leisure time, the
currency which buys that most expensive
commodity, popularity.  He made few friends and
no enemies.  His strong, earnest nature
commanded the respect of his fellows; and his
studious example endeared him to a few of the
most serious among them.  At the age of twenty
Graham went to Europe, where he passed the
next eight years of his life in study and hard
work.  The sketches which he sent home
brought him money enough to live on in that
quarter of Paris where the young art students
congregate.  Poor enough the living had
sometimes been; hunger and cold were well known
to the youth by actual experience.  When he
lived at the rate of five francs a day he thought
himself rich, and gave suppers in his studio, *au
cinquième, Rue d' Enfer*.  Times there had been,
while he was at work upon his great *Salon*
picture of St. Paul, when a loaf of bread and
five sous' worth of the rough red wine of the
people, had sufficed for his day's provender.
Those days of earnest work among the gay
companions, whose lives much resembled his own,
were, perhaps, the happiest time in the life
of the young artist.  Success had not been
wanting to crown his efforts.  The picture on
which he toiled for weary days and months
received "honorable mention" from the judges of
the *Salon*; and to the passing fame which this
success brought him, he owed his introduction to
the woman who had so spoiled the happiness of
his youth.  She was his compatriot, the daughter
of a rich Parisian American, who desired to
make the acquaintance of the artist hero of the
hour.  The young woman was beautiful, heartless,
and slightly emotional.  While in the
society of the handsome, spiritual painter, she
yielded to the charm his strong spirit exercised
over her; and it was not long before their names
were linked together by the small world which
knew them both.  But Graham's happiness was
short-lived; and a few months served to show
him the cold, shallow nature of the woman who
had aroused his first passion.  After he had been
jilted and disillusioned, he turned his back upon
the city where he had learned and suffered so
much, and became a wanderer on the face of
Europe.  One year found him painting the beauties
of Southern Spain; the next saw him sketching
the wonderful scenery which lies about Stockholm.

About two years before the opening of our
story he had returned to San Francisco, with
a portfolio of sketches, a few hundred dollars,
and a prodigious store of canvases, paints, and
brushes.  He was welcomed by the many friends
who had followed his career with interest, and
soon received more orders for portraits than he
could well fill.  His taste led him to prefer
another branch of painting; and it was for the
purpose of studying the very beautiful scenery in the
neighborhood of San Rosario that he had
established himself in the tower of the old Spanish
Mission.  He was also partly induced to take
this step, because he found that home life, always
irksome to him, had become, after his long
emancipation from domestic rules and regulations,
wellnigh intolerable.

Graham's character was a peculiar one, full of
contradictory traits; it might be compared to
a mass of white quartz, through which ran deep
veins of the purest gold.  In some respects it
was a hard nature, with certain tender qualities;
and nowhere was there to be found an ounce of
base metal; a pitiless nature, which knew not
how to forgive either its own faults or those of
his fellow-men.  If his judgments of others were
harsh, his self-despair was sometimes fanatical.
His ideal of manhood was as pure and noble as
was that of the perfect King Arthur; that he
failed a hundred times a day in living up to
it, had not the effect of lowering that ideal one
hair's-breadth.  His highest duty was towards his
own soul and its struggle to reach the perfection
he held it to be capable of attaining.  With
the mind of an ascetic, he was endowed with a
warm, sensuous temperament, having a passionate
delight in beauty, light, and color, and
capable of living through the senses with the keen
enjoyment of a Sybarite.  A strain of music, a
beautiful flower, or a fair child moved him to a
degree of pleasure that to any nature save an
artistic one was incomprehensible.  Filled with
pity at the sight of distress, he would
unhesitatingly give his last dollar to a needy rascal; but
if appealed to for sympathy by the same sinner,
the scorching contempt by which he would blast
the shameful deeds for which, to him, there was
no palliation, would leave the wrong-doer a
sadder if not a wiser man.  Because he expected
so much of men, their short-comings outraged
him.  To a man of this character it was easier, if
not better, to avoid the paths of his fellows; and
his life had often been that of a hermit, even
when he dwelt in the busiest cities of the world.
Not willing that one shadow from the burden
of his life should fall upon the paths of those
who cared for him, his voice and face were
always cheery when in their company.  He
wanted not the sympathy of man or woman, and
endured what griefs were given him to bear in
silence and alone.  That divine mandate, "Bear
ye one another's burdens," was meaningless to
him; for he had ever borne his burden
unsupported and unhelped.  The struggle between
the two sides of his nature, the ascetic and the
poetic, seemed sometimes like to rend soul and
body apart; at other times both contending
forces seemed asleep, and the current of his life
flowed peacefully on.  There were periods when
the tender golden veins seemed to overlap and
hide the flinty quartz; then he felt alive, with
thrilling pulses and lips breaking into song; then
he painted rapidly, painlessly, achieving quick
successes, sometimes making brilliant failures.  At
other periods hyper-criticism of himself seemed
to weight his brush and dim his vision, to take
the color from the warm earth and tender sky;
then the life-blood pulsed slowly through his
veins, and he forgot to sing.

Into the existence of this self-centred being,
with its extremes of cold and warmth, few
personal influences had crept; and now, for the first
time in many years, he felt his life to have
become entangled, for good or ill, with that of
another human creature.  Since his first meeting
with Millicent, on that memorable night when he
had found her the central figure of a picture of
warmth and comfort, his frozen existence had
been thawed and made happy by the subtle
influence which she wielded over him.  Without
reasoning with himself, he had yielded to the
pleasurable charm, only amazed, and perhaps
a little glad, to find that there was a woman
who could rob him of his well-earned sleep,
and dance through his dreams at night with a
wilful persistence.  If he had been obliged to
characterize the influence which the girl held
over him, he would probably have said that she
made his life vivid, and reminded him that his
nature was human and not mechanical.  Day
by day her presence became more necessary to
him; and his work was slighted, or hastily
performed, in order that he might be free the sooner
to reach her side.  Without retrospection or
introspection he had lived through the pleasant
days at San Real, when Millicent's heroic
behavior had made him feel doubly grateful to
her: he now owed her his life, as well as the
new pleasure in that life.  When the happy
visit had come to an end, and he had parted with
her after the return to the Ranch, it had seemed
as if he could not leave her as a friend only.
That one swift, silent embrace had broken the
peaceful contract of friendship; and he had sealed
the tumultuous untried bond of love upon her lips.

Since that white night with its unspoken
protestation, Time seemed to have taken unto
himself new, strong wings, on which he bore the
lovers through the bright weeks of the
spring-tide of love all too swiftly.  Few words of
explanation had been necessary; each understood
the other, except when that chill, impalpable
something seemed to come between them like a
cloud, as it had done in the first days of their
acquaintance.  The one note which was never
absolutely in tune in their love harmony, at
these times made a discord, and disagreements
which grieved them both sprang up between
them; but these were rare, and the pale face of
the artist was less shadowy than in other days;
while Millicent seemed transformed from a statue
to a living being, with a heart tender and full of
love towards all her kind.  But her cheek grew
less round than it had been in the days before
this new life was poured into her veins, and long,
sleepless vigils told upon her strength.  She was
happy with a joy of which she had never before
dreamed, and yet weary nights of weeping traced
dark circles about her eyes.  What struggle
could it be that left her pale and broken, and
drew pitiful sighs from her white lips when she
found herself between the four walls of her own
room?  One word from Graham, the sound of
his horse's hoofs as he drew near the house,
would banish the pained look, call back the color
to the lips and cheek, and give the old brightness
to her deep eyes; but when he was gone,
the painful thoughts winged swiftly back to
torture her.

To the sweet, open-hearted Barbara, Millicent's
state of mind was incomprehensible.  The cool,
indifferent, somewhat scornful girl had been
transformed into an excitable, impulsive creature,
always in one of the extremes of spirits, by turns
gay with a gayety contagious, irresistible,
committing every sort of extravagance; and again
serious with a tragic sadness, more pathetic
than the wildest weeping.  Mrs. Deering, with
that sublime unconsciousness which sympathetic
women know how to assume at will, saw nothing.

The happy summer weeks slipped all too
rapidly away, and the last days of August were
come.  It was at this time that a long-planned
excursion took place, and the family of the San
Rosario Ranch went to pass the day with some
friends who were camping out at a distance of
fifteen miles from the house.  Ever since her
arrival in California, Millicent had heard of
Maurice Galbraith, a friend of the family, whom a
combination of circumstances had prevented her
from meeting.  It was to his camp that they
were wending their way when Graham joined
them on horseback, as they drove down the
shaded road which passes through the great
grove of redwoods, and leads to the dusty
highway.  Millicent was driving in the light phaeton
with young Deering; Barbara and her mother
following in the large wagon driven by Pedro,
one of the Mexican helpers.  Crouching on the
floor of the wagon behind the seats sat Ah Lam,
with his spotless linen and shining coppery
countenance.  He could not sit beside the "Greaser,"
or Mexican, and this lowly place was allotted
him.  His round, placid face, with its clear brown
skin and oblique eyes, was not an unpleasing
one.  His hands and arms were finely modelled,
and his sturdy figure was of a much more solid
type than is usual with his race.  From his
position it was possible for him to hold a parasol
over Mrs. Deering, which he did without
varying the angle of the rather heavy umbrella one
degree during the whole long journey.  He had
been taught that hardest of lessons for the
Chinaman,--that obedience and respect to the
ladies of the family are even more necessary
than submission to the master.  On his arrival
at the Ranch he had coolly and placidly ignored
all orders given him by the female members of
the household as unworthy of notice.  When he
finally had learned the lesson that "Melican
woman boss too," he had never failed in respect
to the ladies.

The drive was a beautiful one.  The road led
through deep valleys, still wet with the night
dew; sometimes it curled around the side of a
mountain which barred its progress, and again
it plunged down to the level of a swift stream.
There was a certain spot where Millicent, who
was familiar with the first five miles of the route,
always stopped for a few moments.  Sphinx
had grown accustomed to bring his sleepy
gait to a standstill just at the brink of the
bridge which spanned the rushing forest river,
grown boisterous at this place.  All about the
spot stood the great hills, some green with the
never-fading redwoods and madrone trees, others,
stripped by the woodman's craft, naked and
unsightly.  Behind them stretched the hot, red
high-road, with its group of humble cabins.
In front of one of these a group of strange,
wolfish-looking children had called a greeting to
Pedro, the driver, who was of their kin.  The
narrow, weather-beaten bridge, with its shaky
wooden piers, joined the highway over which
they had come, to a forest road which hung
over the stream and skirted the mountain's
base.  The gray ruin of what had once been a
mill stood on the farther bank, with rusty, idle
wheels and empty grain-bins.  There was a
small islet in the stream, between which and
the near bank was a clear pool which reflected
with perfect distinctness the trees and rocks,
the very ferns and marsh flowers of the
overhanging bank.  Here the party paused for a
few moments, enjoying the familiar beauty of
the scene.

"You will paint this place one day for me,
will you not?  I care very much for it."  Millicent
was the speaker; and the artist close at her
side laughed and answered,--

"Your will, of course, is my law, lady; but
when you can teach the bird on yonder twig
a new song, you can perhaps choose a spot
where a painter shall see a picture.  Much
that is beautiful in nature cannot be portrayed
in art."

For a moment longer they paused on the
bank, little thinking how that scene would be
graven on their memories in after days; and then
Hal brandished his whip, and Sphinx started off
at a brisk trot, the strong mules following at the
top of their speed, while Graham led the way
on his fleet mustang.  It was not far from high
noon when the party arrived at the place of
destination, recognized by a flag floating above the
low underbrush at the foot of a hill.  In reply
to Hal's lusty hallooing, a young man emerged
from the other side of the hill, and waving his
hat in greeting, hurried to help Mrs. Deering
descend from the wagon.

"How late you are, good people!" he cried in
a pleasant voice.  "The fellows thought you were
going to disappoint us; but I had too much faith
in your word, Mrs. Deering, to doubt you.  Miss
Deering, you were too quick for me; your agility
is only excelled by your grace.  Well, Graham,
glad to see you; for once you are better than
your word."

The young men shook hands with that
punctilious politeness which gentlemen who do not
quite like each other are apt to show in the
presence of mutual lady friends.  Deering
presented their host to Miss Almsford, and at that
moment the other two woodmen made their
appearance,--Michael O'Neil, a jolly-looking young
Irishman, and Dick Hartley, a dark-browed
Englishman.  The three men were intimates at
the Ranch, and Millicent already knew O'Neil
and Hartley; the latter was an old friend and
travelling-companion of Graham.  Leaving
Deering and O'Neil to take care of the horses,
Galbraith led the way to the camp, a sheltered spot
on the south side of the protecting hill.  Three
small sleeping-tents here stood close together.
Galbraith's was the central one; it was
wonderfully luxurious, Millicent thought, with its
comfortable rug and little iron bedstead, two chairs,
and a writing-table.  A small looking-glass had
been brought from town "on purpose for the visit
of the ladies," Hartley assured them; at which
statement there was a general laugh at the
young Englishman's expense, his personal vanity
being well known.  But it was of the greenwood
drawing-room that the ladies expressed the
highest approval.  A square space of ground
had been cleared of the dense undergrowth, its
smooth surface being thickly carpeted by soft
piles of fresh, sweet ferns.  Close-growing
shrubs and bushes served as walls, while the
thick branches of the great trees made a roof
close enough to keep out the heat of the sun.
The flowers of the manzanita and the buckeye
perfumed the air of this sylvan boudoir, wherein
were ranged comfortable stools and camp-chairs.
A wide hammock fitted with a red blanket
swung between two straight tree stems.  Here
they sat for a while, resting from the long drive;
and here it was that Millicent had time to
observe more particularly the appearance of
Mr. Maurice Galbraith, of whom she had heard so
much.  Galbraith was not, strictly speaking, a
handsome man, though he had a good deal of
beauty.  He was tall and slender, with a finely
shaped head, well set upon the shoulders.  His
bright, intelligent face was too thin for beauty;
while the fine, brilliant eyes, with their heavy
lashes, were hollow from over-work.  His
delicate chin and mouth were exquisitely modelled;
while the nose seemed a trifle over-large through
the extreme thinness of the face.  The features
in repose were almost stern in their look of
concentrated thought; but when he laughed it
was with the sudden merriment of a child, the
mouth parting over the small white teeth, and
the large, dark, hollow eyes flashing cheerily.
Barely over thirty, he might have passed for
some years older, an unflagging attention to his
arduous profession having told somewhat upon
his strength.  Among the lawyers on the Pacific
coast, Galbraith was considered a rising man,
his late appointment to a district attorneyship
proving the confidence which he enjoyed.  Millicent
thought him decidedly the most attractive
of their hosts; but her quick intuition had already
told her that Graham felt little cordiality towards
him, and she spoke chiefly to Hartley, the rather
insignificant "beauty man" of the camp.  From
him she learned that for several years the trio
of friends had passed the summer months in
camping out at some spot not far distant from
the railroad, which carried them every morning
to San Francisco, and which brought them back
as early in the afternoon as might be.  Their
one henchman (of course a Chinaman) was left
in charge of the camp during the day, and
performed the household work necessary to so
primitive a *ménage*.  Not far distant from the
camp, the stream whose course they had
followed spread out into a wide, deep pool,
affording an opportunity for a refreshing plunge, with
which the three friends were wont to begin the
proceedings of the day.  A breakfast eaten at
the tent door was followed by a walk to the
station, half a mile distant, when they bade
good-by to their sylvan home.  Four o'clock, or
at latest five, saw them on their way from the
city; and an hour or two of angling in the cool
stream, wherein swam delicious trout, or a tramp
through the woods with a gun, brought them to
the dinner hour.  Just at this point in Hartley's
chronicle of their daily life, Ah Lam, who had
been brought to assist the one servant of the
camp in his preparations, announced that dinner
was served.  Millicent never learned how the
evenings were passed in camp, for there was
a general move towards the dining-room, another
triumph of sylvan architecture.  A few paces
distant from the green parlor, but hidden from
it by the thick intervening bushes, was a great
fig-tree with wide-spreading branches laden with
delicious purple fruit.  At the foot of the tree
stood a table laid with plates, knives and forks,
and other appurtenances of civilized life.
Millicent gave a little cry of delight at the prettily
decorated board, which was wreathed with a
garland of green leaves and covered with bright
flowers.  Barbara, who had been reading Dumas
with that intense delight to which the first
acquaintance with French romance gives rise, said
that the banquet surpassed the one spread by
Joseph Bassano for the Dauphine of France in
the old Chateau.  Millicent found herself at the
table between Graham and the good-natured
Irishman, O'Neil.  Her lover seemed to her
handsomer to-day among this band of his
contemporaries than ever before; and she looked
at him with her whole soul in her eyes,
forgetting all in the world beside or beyond him.
O'Neil, who was the wit of the camp, told funny
stories at which every one laughed; but when
Graham spoke, the men all listened, like soldiers
waiting the words of their superior.  Before they
had come to the table, the artist had twined
a girdle for Millicent's slender waist of some
feathery green creeper, a spray of which she had
wreathed about her head.  When the red wine
was poured, Graham spilled from his glass, as
if by accident, a few drops upon the earth,
then, touching his goblet to hers, he said in an
undertone,--

"We will drink the old toast, my nymph, to
Pan, *evoë, evoë*!"

Galbraith devoted himself to Barbara; and after
dinner, when all justice had been done to the
woodland fare, and the great warm figs had been
eaten with the sunshine in them, the party broke
up into groups.  Graham, who had brought his
colors, made a sketch of the view from the
hilltops, Millicent sitting silently beside him,
handing him the brushes as he required them, then
squeezing the little tubes of paint with a childish
delight.  Barbara and Galbraith made their way
to the pool, where Miss Deering angled
successfully, landing four good-sized trout within
the hour.  Hal Deering and O'Neil employed
the time in firing at an ace of hearts pinned to a
tree; while Hartley and Mrs. Deering sat in the
green parlor, where the thoughtful, motherly
woman put a very necessary patch on one of
Galbraith's coats, in which her quick glance
had descried a rent, as it hung on a peg in his tent.

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, and his
sketch drew near its completion, Graham found
time occasionally to speak to his companion
sitting so quietly and contentedly at his side.  The
absolute ignoring of self possible to this intelligent
girl, with her strong mind and latent talents,
was incomprehensible to him.  She was perfectly
happy to forget her individual existence in
a sympathetic interest in his work.  He felt sure
that should it please him she would give up her
music, her studies, every other interest in life
and be content to sit always as now, watching
his work, giving a word of intelligent criticism
when asked to do so, stifling every thought which
should cloud the mirror of her mind in which he
might see himself ever reflected.  To the
sensitive man, who had passed most of his life in
solitude, this absolute, unreasoning devotion had
something intensely painful about it.  If he had
known how to frame his thought he would have
begged her to care less for him.  He felt
himself an ingrate, so poor a return could he make
for this wealth of love poured out at his feet.
Her presence was a pleasure to him; he loved to
watch her graceful motions as she walked, and
the beautiful poses which she all unconsciously
took in sitting, standing, or moving.  Her
appreciation of his work, her understanding of himself,
were truer than ever man or woman had shown
before; and yet he sometimes was annoyed by
the irksome feeling that what he had to give her
was but a bankrupt's portion of love.  Times
there were when this feeling did not intrude
itself upon him; and the day which was now
drawing to its close was one of those precious
ones wherein had been no slightest
misunderstanding betwixt them.  When Hal came to
tell them that it was time to return, Graham put
up his work with a sigh that it must be so
soon finished, and the two lovers lingered for
a moment, taking a last look over the little camp.

After bidding their hosts farewell the guests
turned their horses toward home, the larger
wagon with Mrs. Deering and Barbara leading
the way.  Sphinx, whose best days were over,
was tired; and Millicent soon lost sight of the
swift mule team.  Graham rode a little in
advance of the carriage, leaving the place at
Millicent's side to Mr. Galbraith, who had
volunteered to accompany them for a part of the
journey.  She found him a most attractive person,
and was much interested in his conversation.
He told her anecdotes of the primitive justice
which prevailed in certain remote districts of
the State, and gave some personal reminiscences
of his earliest cases, in which he had been called
upon to defend or accuse criminals of the most
desperate class.  Galbraith talked with that sort
of brilliancy which requires sympathetic attention
from his hearers, and for the first three miles
of the road he was able to win this from Miss
Almsford.  When, however, the girl's eyes
wandered from his intelligent face to the man on
horseback half a dozen rods in advance, and she
mentally compared the strong, elastic figure of
the distant horseman to the man at her side,
Galbraith found that it was time to return to the
camp and "leave them to their own fate."  Millicent's
parting words were doubly gracious to the
young lawyer, from the fact that she thought his
departure would bring her lover to her.  In this
hope she was however disappointed, for Graham
was in one of those moods when silence was more
attractive to him than Hal's amusing companionship.
He would have liked to have Millicent all
to himself on that pleasant homeward ride; but
Millicent with the inevitable addition of Deering
could not win him to her side.  Suddenly the
two in the carriage saw Graham's horse give a
wild rear and plunge, after which he shied at
some unseen object by the roadside with a force
which would have unseated any ordinary
horseman.  The animal now stood for an instant
trembling in every limb, and then seemed to
fling himself and his rider in a perfect agony
of terror down the high-road, his four feet
beating out the startling measure of a break-neck
gallop to Millicent's horrified ears.  From the
cloud of dust, and through the cadence of the
mustang's hoofs, these words were shouted back
to them,--

"Look out for rattlesnakes!"

They had by this time reached the spot where
Graham's horse had taken fright; and old Sphinx
shivered violently, tossing his head and snorting
loudly.  In a few moments, it seemed to Millicent
an eternity, Graham rejoined them, having
regained control over his fiery horse.

"Deering, stand by Sphinx's head and hold
my horse, will you?"

As he spoke John Graham dismounted, pulled
his high boots over his knees, and seizing the
heavy whip from the carriage, advanced cautiously
to the edge of the road, while Hal soothed
the startled horses.  Millicent, left alone in the
wagon, gave a low cry of terror.  Graham was at
her side in an instant.

"Dear one, you must help me with your courage;
do not be afraid, there is really no danger,"
he murmured.  She was silent, and tried to
smile an answer.

Graham now walked slowly along the road,
looking intently into the grass which lined the
highway.  Suddenly the dread sound of the
rattle was heard, awful alike to man and beast.
Sphinx started again, but was soon quieted, while
Tasso reared and gave a shriek of terror.
Graham, raising his heavy whip, brought the thong
with a tremendous force across the snake's body.
The creature reared itself with blazing eyes and
sprang towards its pursuer, who dealt it another
blow; and before it could coil itself for a second
spring, Graham ran forward, and with his iron
boot-heel crushed the reptile's head into the
dust.  He soon despatched the writhing creature,
and was stooping to cut the rattles from its
lifeless body, when a warning cry from Millicent
told him that the battle was not over.  The
mate of the dead snake was close beside him,
ready to spring upon his stooping body.  He
straightened himself, and ran backwards, firing
his revolver as he went.  The shot missed the
snake, whose rattle rang out a very death-knell.
It leaped savagely towards him.  Graham had
dropped his whip, most efficient of weapons
with which to meet these dangerous animals,
and hastily tearing off his coat he threw it over
the snake.  He sprang upon the garment and
stamped in every direction; finally pinning the
creature low down in the body, the bristled head,
with its awful tongue, reared itself from beneath
the folds of the coat, wounded but furious to
avenge its mate.  The horrible hiss chilled
Millicent's blood.  She saw the forked tongue dart
out and strike Graham's leg.  Mercifully it
struck below the knee, the fang failing to
penetrate the thick leather of the boot.  The
creature wreathed another coil of its length from
beneath the iron heel, and again made ready to
strike.  Graham cocked his revolver, and while
the angry red throat, with its death-dealing jaws,
yawned before him, he poured a volley of hot
lead into the writhing body.  One, two, three
shots Millicent counted; and then after a pause
Graham's voice rang out brisk and clear: "All
right, my girl, if there are no more of the beasts."  The
still quivering bodies of the snakes lay in the
dust of the road, and Graham, recovering his
whip, carefully examined the locality from which
they had emerged, to see if by chance a nest of
eggs or young ones was to be found.  His search
was unsuccessful; and after securing the second
rattle, which was a long one, proving how
powerful the reptile had been, he measured the bodies
of the dead snakes, and rejoined Millicent.  She
held out her hand to him; and Deering, who had
had as much as he could do in controlling the
two horses, congratulated him on his success,
and was about to resume his seat in the carriage.
Millicent had been perfectly quiet and composed
during the time of danger; her firm hand and
voice had controlled the frightened horse; her
watchfulness had warned Graham of the
approach of his second enemy.  But now the
snakes were both dead, her lover was safe, and
there was no further need of her strength or
composure.  As Hal approached the carriage, she
dropped the reins, buried her face in her hands,
and burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping.
Hal, who had lifted one foot to the step of the
vehicle, dropped it to the ground, and retreated
a few paces with a frightened countenance.  He
would not have been afraid to encounter a nest
of rattlesnakes, but a weeping girl completely
unnerved him.  He retreated behind the wagon,
and, after a hurried conversation with Graham,
without more ado, mounted that gentleman's
horse and rode off as fast as the animal would
carry him; while Graham quietly stepped into
the vehicle, and touching Millicent lightly on
the shoulder, said, "Millicent, it is I."

The passionate weeping grew more quiet; the
sobs became less violent; a slight tremor ran
through her frame at the touch; at the words
the tears rolled back to their source; and
presently a pale face was lifted from the supporting
hands, and the mouth quivered into a smile.
And so they rode home together, hand in hand,
through the deepening shadows; and one more
day of the sweet summer-tide of love had passed,
and each was richer for that day, how often
recalled by both of them when the shadows of
life had deepened into night.





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.. _`CHAPTER X.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X.

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..

   |  "Thereon comes what awakening!  One grave sheet
   |  Of cold implacable white about me drawn"--

.. vspace:: 2

John Graham was one of those men in whose
nature there seems no trace of feminality.  Man
and woman supplement each other, each
bringing certain qualities to the completion of
humanity; and yet it is rare to find a man whose
character is not modified by some mother trait.
Graham's qualities and his faults were equally
masculine; he was more strongly attracted by
women through this intense virility than are men
who, having some trace of the feminine in their
nature, understand and sympathize more
perfectly with the opposite sex.  The attraction was
one against which he rebelled, deeming it to
belong to the weaker side of his nature; and he
had so ordered his life that it might not fall
within the influence of maid or matron.  This
antagonism to woman made itself felt in his
work; his successful pictures were of men, their
high exploits and successes.  A noble painting
of Saint Paul, which now hung over the altar
of a Roman Catholic church in San Francisco,
had won him his first reputation in Paris; he
could understand and sympathize with that great
man as if he had known him.  It was only the
highest type of man that attracted him,--the
lovers of men, and not their conquerors.  He
had never tried to paint Alexander, but had
labored long and lovingly over a picture of
Socrates.  The female subjects which he had treated
were not less powerful than these, but the force
which they showed was scornful and untender.
A marvellous painting of Circe hung in his
studio; it was one of his most masterly works, and
yet, though critics had praised and connoisseurs
had approved it, the picture was still unsold.
With black brows bound by red-gold serpents,
the enchantress lay upon a luxurious couch; her
beautiful body was but half veiled, the arms and
bosom immodestly displayed; about her jewelled
feet fawned the creatures whose brute natures
had conspired with the enchantress to smother
whatever was human in their beings; self-despair
and scorn for their abasement deformed her
regular features to that moral ugliness never so
hideous as when seen in a youthful and beautiful
face.  A terrible picture, full of wrath, but
untempered by mercy.  His Cressida, purchased by
a great European Academy, was another wonderful
picture; a picture which made men smile a
little bitterly, and had brought an angry flush to
the cheek of more than one sensitive woman.

Over a man of this nature woman holds a more
important influence than with any other class;
it may be a good influence or it may be a
harmful one, but it is the most potent one which
touches his life.  Had John Graham loved
happily at twenty-five, instead of most miserably,
he would have been a very different man at
thirty from the hermit artist of San Rosario.
It would have been better for him if he could
have learned the lesson which all wise men
learn if they live long enough,--that women are
neither angels who stand immeasurably above
men, nor inferior beings whose place is at their
feet, but human like themselves, full of good
and faulty instincts, and, with all their
imperfections, the God-given helpmates of man.  So
justly should they be judged; and if a little
mercy be claimed for them, generosity should
not deny it, so few are their chances in life
compared with those of their brothers.  A woman
has but one possibility of happiness in this
world.  The stakes are high on which she risks
her whole fortune, which she may lose by one
unredeemable throw.

If Graham could have known all this, as,
being what he was, he could not, he would have
gained that one element which his genius lacked
to make it superlative.  Man and child he was
by turns, but never for an instant had he been
able to look at life from the standpoint of a
woman.  He had once loved the whole gentler
sex with that chivalrous spirit which made him
unfit to live in the nineteenth century.  No
discourteous or cruel word toward any woman had
he to reproach himself with; he had looked
upon them as creatures so far removed from
his sphere, that his mind must be cleared of
every base thought before it might dwell upon
them; they were mysterious angels which it
was his happiness to worship.  Then came a
change, and the love which had turned to grief
darkened his soul.  As his heart had been filled
with a love so great that it embraced all the
sisters of his idol, his contempt went out
towards them, as his love had done before.  His
revenge had been terrible: he had struck at
womankind; he had pictured it in its
debasement for all the world to see.

The few women for whom he cared were
elderly people, whose life-battles had been fought
and won; who sat enthroned in the calm of that
peaceful period when youth is no longer regretted
nor old age feared.  Such women he could paint
without bitterness; and his portrait of his mother
was a masterpiece of exquisite sentiment.  No
woman that he had ever met disliked John
Graham; if he was distant and cold, he was
honest and courteous, and a gentleman in the
deepest sense of the word.  He was too
chivalrous to revenge himself on any individual; his
grief was too great to stoop to anything so
mean.  More than one woman would gladly have
loved him, but he avoided them as if they had
been poison-nurtured.

Men, as a rule, respected and feared Graham;
a few of his heart-friends would have given their
lives for him with a smile.  To those who
understood and loved him, there was something more
than human about the man,--a quality to which
the highest part of their nature did homage.
Fools laughed at him for his quixotism; the
critics had worn themselves out in shrieking
abuse of his work which affected him in nowise.
He cared little for men's praise or blame; he
would have died to help them to a new truth.
He was of the stuff which made martyrs in the
old time, crusaders in the dark ages, and artists
in the Renaissance.  His pictures were beautiful
as works of art, but they were great because
they embodied living truths.  At twenty his
friends said that he had great talent; at thirty
his enemies ceased to deny his force; at forty,
if he lived so long, the world would crown him
with its laurel as a man of genius.  If haply
that bitterness which lay like a blight on all his
work, on all his life, might be made sweet!
What a chance was here for the woman whose
love was now breaking over his frozen life with
warmth, fragrance, and beauty!  How grand an
opportunity to sweeten by truth and faith all
that had grown bitter from untruth and
faithlessness!  If she could only have known him as
he was, have understood him and his past, before
she had loved him, what could not Millicent
have accomplished!  Alas! poor child, she knew
nothing of all this.  Her own past was black
with a grief and wrong greater than that which
he had borne.  She, too, was waking, and for
the first time, from a trance of soul and sleep of
heart; she was all engrossed in her own growth
and development.  She was like a little
dungeon-born plant, which has at last climbed through
the iron bars, and under the light and warmth
of the glorious day runs riotous and unthinking
across the wall, up, down, on every side,
content to live and grow in the sun and air.
But the taint of the old wrong and the lie it
had entailed, were not yet left behind.  He
had taken her for a pure white lily; and how
could she tell him that there had been a time
when she lived in darkness and despair before her
life flowered into its one perfect white blossom
under the warmth of his love?

Life is very pleasant at the San Rosario Ranch
with its bordering of peaceful hills.  Here all
are happy, be they of high or low degree; from
the gentle-voiced *châtelaine* to the stranger
within her gates, the potent charm extends.  The
fair daughter and tall son have lived peaceful,
uneventful lives; and though their young eyes
may sometimes turn a little wearily toward the
mountain barrier, beyond which lies the great
busy world, known more to them by hearsay
than by actual experience, they are happy, far
happier than are most of the men and women
in the crowded thoroughfare of the world's cities.
The Ranch does not lie in the belt of gold, nor
in the silver girdle which crosses the Pacific
coast.  The rude mining towns are far distant
from this portion of the dairy lands of California.
The trains which leave the station in this
neighborhood are laden indeed with a golden
freight; but no armed men are found necessary
to guard the boxes filled with their rolls of
fragrant yellow.  The product of the dairy lands
is of a smaller, surer value than that for which
men toil and drudge in the gulches or mines.
Far away to the southward, where the orange
groves are white and golden with their double
burden of blossom and fruit, is a climate milder
than that of San Rosario; and there Hal had set
his heart upon one day establishing himself.  In
that vine country the air is heavy with the
spicy odor of the grape, and the harvest is
blood-red with its life-juices; and yet to
Millicent the fairest garden in this world's garden lay
between the circled hills of San Rosario.

Millicent, having learned the earliest stage of
butter-making under Hal's direction, wished to
be initiated into the mysteries which follow the
skimming of the cream.  Hal gave one of his
boisterous guffaws of laughter when she one
morning gravely informed him that she was
going to help in that day's churning.  She had
donned the prettiest chintz morning gown
imaginable, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow,
and a fresh white apron.  Her skirt was kilted
up half way to the knee, showing a scarlet
petticoat, which in turn exposed the pretty, small feet,
and possibly two inches more of the round ankle
than is usually shown by ladies of her degree.
Tying one of the great picturesque hats which
they had brought home from San Real, under
her chin, the energetic young woman started for
the dairy.  Hal, giving a knowing wink to his
mother and sister standing near by, as if to say
that the joke was too good to be spoiled, followed
her, with Tip, the cross old dog, following him
in turn.

"Millicent, did you ever do any churning?"

"No, but I can learn."

"Without doubt; but tell me, did you ever
see any one else churn?"

"Oh, yes; very often."

"Who, if one may ask?"

"You will not know any better if I tell you.
It was old Nina, at home."

"Ah, old Nina; and what sort of a machine
did she use?"

"She did not use a machine at all; she used a
churn, like anybody else."

"What did it look like?"

"I am sure I have forgotten; it was probably
an old-fashioned one, but it made quite as good
butter as *yours* does;" this in a slightly irritated
voice.  She objected to being catechised, and
had, moreover, a dim sense that Deering was
bent on quizzing her.  She ran along the
footpath in advance in order to avoid further
questioning, and reached the dairy a few minutes
before him.  Finding the main door shut, she
hurried round to the side, when, just as she
turned the corner, her rapid progress was
suddenly brought to an end.  She had met an
obstacle; she had, moreover, fallen into the arms
of the obstacle, which proved to be a tall man
with a kindly voice, for he called out merrily,
"Hello, my girl, where are you going so fast?"
steadying her at the same moment with his arm,
as the sudden shock almost precipitated her from
the path.

Millicent drew back disconcerted and breathless,
and looked up into the face of the man
whom she had so unexpectedly encountered.
When she saw that it was a face familiar to her,
she blushed and stammered a little as she
replied to his astonished greeting.  Mutual
apologies and explanations followed; and Hal, coming
up at that moment, laughed at her discomfiture
till the tears rolled down his face.

"You always laugh at other people's misfortunes,"
cried Millicent, trying to be angry; but it
was impossible to be angry with Hal.  The
irrepressible young rancher carried the day; and
Maurice Galbraith assured Millicent that it was
his awkwardness which had aroused Deering's
merriment.

"We are very glad to see you, Galbraith, but
we are too busy to stop and talk to you just now.
You will find mother and Bab at the house.  I
have a new hand here who is going to take
charge of the churning in future, and I am just
showing her about a little.  Do you catch on?"

"Slang again!  Five cents more towards the
amusement fund."

"Oh, we shall not want any more amusement
fund if you are going to turn worker, Princess."  As
he spoke they entered the cool dairy.  It
was tenantless.  At one end of the room stood
a large wooden vessel, half as big as the Trojan
horse, and from its hollow sides came a dull,
splashing sound.

"Why, you said they would be at work already,"
said Millicent, in a disappointed voice;
"where are they all?"

"Oh, it only takes one man to attend to this
part of the butter-making, and there he is at his
post."

Outside the open doorway, as wide as the
entrance to a barn, sat Pedro, lazily smoking his
pipe, and occasionally flicking with his whip the
strong mule who was slowly revolving round
the small space to which he was tethered.

"Well," said Millicent impatiently, "what does
that mean?"

"Only this, my Princess, that you must turn
the crank that this animal is agitating, with
your own small hands, if you persist in your
resolution to help with the churning."

Millicent's face fell; and Galbraith hastened to
explain to her that the quantity of cream handled
at one churning made it necessary, in a place
where human labor is so dear, to employ
horsepower.  Nobody likes to be laughed at, though
Millicent tried hard to smile at her own blunder;
when Hal, suddenly calling out; "By your leave,
Princess," without a word of warning caught up
the young lady in his arms, and placed her on
the back of the patient mule, remarking, as he
accomplished the feat, "No one can say now
that you have not helped with the churning."

It would be difficult to say whether Millicent
or the mule felt the greater surprise; they were
both taken unawares; but the quadruped was the
first to recover himself, and resumed his weary
task of plodding round in the monotonous circle.
Millicent, clinging closely to the creature, cried
loudly to be relieved from her uncomfortable
position; but Hal, fearing her wrath, had
disappeared into the interior of the dairy, leaving to
Galbraith the pleasure of assisting the young
woman in dismounting.  Pedro, who had been
an amused spectator of the scene, now
announced that the churning was completed, and
that they should soon see the washing of the
butter, if it pleased them to wait.  The big
golden fragments were collected from the sea of
buttermilk, and finally massed together on a
wide table.  There it was worked by Pedro, who
tossed the fragrant mass from side to side,
pressing out the remaining deposits of the milk with
a heavy wooden wand.  He moulded the butter
into fantastic forms, prettiest of which was a
huge bell-shaped flower like a giant trumpet
blossom.  It struck Millicent that here was a
delightful material for modelling; and taking
up a piece of butter and one of the dairy tools,
she forthwith produced a bas-relief portrait of
Galbraith, which would have done credit to the
sculptress of the sleeping Iolanthe.

"There are two classes of hands, those which
are skilful and those which are clumsy; of all
other divisions of humanity this is the most
important.  You, Miss Almsford, are so happy as
to belong to the skilful half, or rather quarter, of
humanity,--for men are all clumsy.  I see that
you can do all things artistic as well as useful
with your fingers."

"I am afraid I have never tried to do much
that was useful," said the girl half ruefully.
"Barbara, now, can do all sorts of things.  But I am
tired of comparing myself with her; I always
suffer by the process;" this with a rather vicious
little stroke at the butter-model, which she was
now finishing into a medallion, with a pattern of
scroll-work for a border.

"Let me judge between yourself and Miss
Barbara.  I know that she can touch the ivory
keys with grace, and can also make wonderful
peach preserves.  On the other hand, you model
in butter and--and--well, what else can those
small hands accomplish of art or industry?"

"They can draw a little as well as model; they
can trim bonnets, yes, really quite well; they
are not unfamiliar with the key-boards of piano
and organ; and, best of all,--I had really
forgotten to enumerate this accomplishment,--they
can move tables and chairs; they can draw pain
from your head; they can put you into a trance,--they
are, in fact, magnetic hands."

"It seems, then, that you are a Spiritualist."

"Far from it; by what power I do the few
things which form the *repertoire* of my manifestations,
as the mediums call them, I do not know
any more than you."

"Will you give me a *séance*?"

"Indeed; no."

"And because--"

"Because it tires me, and I am rather afraid
of my own power.  Some one once compared me
to a child who had got hold of an electric
battery which he did not understand, and with
which he unwittingly produced inexplicable
phenomena, not devoid of danger to himself."

"You are really in earnest then, and believe
in these manifestations?"

"Perfectly so; and I am rather cowardly about
exploring them to their source, as I have seen so
many strong minds unhinged by study of this
subject.  I certainly object to the vulgar theory,
that the spirits of those who have gone before
us have nothing better to do than to tip tables
and dip their hands in pails of paraffine which
accommodating mediums prepare for them."

"You do not believe in mediums, then?"

"I believe no manifestation to be genuine
which comes from a professional medium.  That
they often have real power, I do not doubt; but
so soon as it is a question of earning their living,
they must inevitably fall back upon fraud.  But
we are growing quite serious about this subject
which I never like to talk of for fear of being
misunderstood."

"But I am really interested in what you say--"

"Never mind; here is your portrait, which is
not flattered, I frankly confess; but is it a little
like you?"

"If I know my face at all, it is wonderfully
good.  Would that you had deigned to model it
in a less perishable material!"

"Oh, no! this is infinitely better, it is so much
more appropriate--

"Thanks for the compliment; but why, if I
may ask, should you consider butter to be
particularly suitable to me?"

"Not to you personally, but to humanity.  Is
it not stupid to carve bronze fac-similes of that
which is as perishable as the grass?"

"But had it not been for this stupidity, how
should we know the features of Cæsar?"

"And would it greatly matter?"

"I think so; but a young lady who so cruelly
assures me that butter is the only material in
which my humble features deserve to be reproduced--"

Millicent interrupted the speaker by her pleasant
laugh, with its sound of falling waters, and
thanking Pedro for what he had shown her, led
the way from the dairy.  She refused to speak
further on the subject during the day-time, but
as they sat together on the piazza in the
twilight, Galbraith referred to it again; and, after
much persuasion, Millicent seated herself at a
table, round which the company grouped
themselves, placing their hands lightly on its surface.
Barbara, who was seated next to Millicent, their
hands touching one another, seemed strangely
affected, after they had been sitting for some
time in silence.  She manifested unmistakable
signs of sleepiness, and finally, with a long
sigh, her eyes closed and her head fell upon
Millicent's shoulder.  With a little frightened cry,
Millicent quickly lifted her, and making several
passes over her head called Hal to come and
support his sister.  In a moment Barbara
recovered herself, and showed no more symptoms
of sleep.  She laughed heartily, and said that a
peculiar sensation in her elbows had preceded
her momentary unconsciousness.  Galbraith
applauded the little episode, which he assured
Millicent was very well acted by both participants.
The girl turned her eyes, deep and burning, full
upon him, half in anger, and said,--

"Very well, Mr. Galbraith, we will see if you
can act a part as well as Barbara.  Lay your
hand in mine--so."

The young man smiled, and did as he was bid,
with a courteous bow, as if deprecating the
power in which he did not believe; and for a
space of time they stood looking each other full
in the face.  Then Millicent's slight form seemed
to vibrate, and from her eyes a light flashed into
the man's dark orbs, her cheek flushed, and from
every nerve in her body an electric flash seemed
to emanate, concentrating into a broad current
at the shoulder, and slipping through the round
white arm to the very finger-tips.  Galbraith's
face paled as hers flushed; a stinging sensation
half painful, half agreeable, made him wince; and
when in a few moments Millicent withdrew her
hand, he remained standing motionless, white
to the lips, with dim, dreaming eyes, and
slow-beating heart.

"Speak," said the magnetizer, "tell me what
is in your mind?"

"There is nothing," answered the man, in a
low, monotonous voice.

"Now speak, and tell me what you see."

"I see a man on horseback; the horse is
running away.  Now he gallops, and the rider
loses control of him; they disappear in a cloud
of dust, and I see nothing.  Now they return;
the horse is going quietly, and the rider looks
towards a carriage in which sits a lady; it is
Millicent.  He enters the carriage; she is
weeping, and he touches--" he paused.

Millicent's cheek had grown crimson.  She said
in a low tone,--

"Why do you not continue?"

"Because you will not let me."

At this moment a light step sounded on the
piazza.  Millicent turned her head and saw
Graham approaching her.  She stepped quickly
towards him, forgetting Galbraith, the company,
everything and everybody, save that her lover
had come to her.  As she turned from him,
Galbraith reeled suddenly, and would have fallen
had not Hal steadied him to a seat.

"I fear I am interrupting you," said the artist,
in a cool voice, betraying some annoyance.

"Indeed, no," cried the girl, "we were only
trying the stupid old game of willing people; I
have succeeded in magnetizing Mr. Galbraith here."

By this time the young lawyer had recovered
himself, though he looked strangely pale and
agitated.  He was somewhat overcome by what
had gone before, and was not a little troubled by
the power which the tall, straight girl had
exercised over him.  He rebelled against it, and yet
the sensation of giving up his volition, and
living for the time only by her will and her thought
had not been unmixed with a keen pleasure.  If
no one had witnessed the affair, above all, if
Graham had not seen it, he would not have
greatly cared; but though he had no recollection
of what he had seen and described in Millicent's
mind, that evening's experience deepened the
vague antipathy he had always felt towards the
artist, into a positive dislike.

Later, as they walked together alone, Graham
asked Millicent if she would magnetize him, to
which she replied in the negative.

"Do you think that you could succeed?"

"I cannot tell; but if I could, I should not be
willing to do so."

"And yet you threw a spell over that fellow
Galbraith?"

"Dear, there is a difference; cannot you see?"

"No; upon my soul I can't."

"I do not want to command even your thought
for an instant; you must think of me to please
yourself, not because I will it."

"What a strange girl you are, Millicent!  Do
you really love me so very much?"

"I love you better than my own soul."

"A dangerous thing, child; do not ever say
that to me again."

"Why?"

"It shocks me; I cannot tell you why."

For answer, she gave him a rose from her
breast with a childish gesture, as if asking
forgiveness.  There was an awkwardness, born of
an unwonted shyness, in the movement which
was more attractive to the artist than the most
graceful attitude he had ever seen her assume.
He caught the hand with the rose and crushed
them both in his two strong palms, as if to hurt
her.  She smiled, though her wrist reddened
from the sudden pressure.  It is more sweet to
bear pain from those we love, than to receive
kindness from a hand which is not dear.

As Graham was taking his leave, he asked
Millicent for two books which she had promised
to lend him.  Barbara had joined them, and
offered to fetch them for him.

"Thank you, Barbara, but I know just where
they are."

"Is it not the Petrarch and your manuscript
translation of Dante that Mr. Graham wants?"

"Yes."

"You left them on your table.  I saw them
when I went up to shut the blinds.  You had
better let me go, you are so tired."

"Yes, let Miss Deering get them for you;
you are quite worn out with your magnetizing."  He
wanted to say one last good-night to her.

His lightest wish was her law; she nodded
gratefully to Barbara, who disappeared, while
Graham told her once more how lovely she was
that night.  When Miss Deering came back,
Graham had already mounted his horse and
Millicent was feeding the animal with sugar.

"You are sure you have the right books, Barbara?"

"Quite sure; I know them perfectly."

"Many thanks to you both, and good-night."

Millicent was in a wakeful mood that night.
She went to the piano and played for an hour or
two, as she only played when alone.  Her hands
drifted dreamily over the key-board, drawing out
fantastic melodies,--themes which were
composed and forgotten within the hour.  In an
obscure corner of the room stood a head of
Beethoven.  Her eyes were fixed on the face of
the master while she played, and as the notes
grew strong and sweet she smiled; when the
harmony changed to a tender minor strain, the
smile faded from her face.  The music
expressed the thoughts which drifted through her
mind.  At first she played the quick movement
of a march, through which rang out the
measured beat of a horse's hoofs; then the strain
changed to a pensive nocturne suggestive of the
forest at night.  A tender slumber-song
followed, in which her voice took up the melody,
chanting loving words in the language of
Tuscany.  The light, delicate thread of harmony
now broadened into a full consonance of sound,
the chords following each other tumultuously, as
if in translating one supreme moment of leave-taking.
As she was striking the closing strains
of this emotional improvisation, her powerful
voice trembling with a passionate *addio*, the
sweet symphony of sounds was interrupted by
a crashing discord.  She sprang from the piano
startled and trembling, to find that a heavy vase
of flowers had fallen on the key-board from the
shelf above the piano.  The metal jar was
uninjured, but about her feet were scattered the
petals of a bunch of white roses which Graham
had plucked for her that night.  So rudely
was her rhapsody interrupted!  She closed the
piano, and, after restlessly wandering through
the silent house, went to her own room, where
she sat looking out of her window at the moon-lit
hills.  She could not sleep, she was full of
unrest.

The gray morning light was filtering into
Barbara Deering's room when she was awakened by
a light touch on the shoulder.  Millicent stood
before her, gray as the twilight; she held in her
hand a small parchment book.

"Barbara, what books did you give Mr. Graham?"

"The Petrarch and your Dante.  What is the
matter, Millicent?  Have n't you been in bed?"

"No, I could not sleep.  Here is the little
Dante; where did you find the book you
mistook for it?"

Barbara sat up and rubbed her eyes confusedly.

"Why, it was not where I had last seen it.  I
found it somewhere, in your jewel-box, I think.
I am so sorry I made a mistake; 't was just like
the Dante.  Does it matter much?"

"I only wanted to know, Barbara; go to sleep again."

She spoke in a low, constrained voice, and
glided quietly from the room.  Barbara, only
half awake, gave a sigh, and settling her flaxen
head among the pillows, again fell asleep and
dreamed that she had stabbed Millicent with a
knife, and that Graham was trying to stanch
the wound with the leaves of a little parchment
book.

When Graham arrived at his lonely tower,
after making his horse comfortable for the night,
he looked into French John's cabin to see
whether all was well with the old fellow.  The
door was fast, and looking through the small
window, the young man saw the wood-cutter
lying on his hard couch, his gun beside him, his
dog curled up at his feet.  The creature growled
at the sound of Graham's footsteps, but catching
sight of a familiar face through the window, he
gave a comfortable yawp, wagged his tail, and
relapsed into slumber.  The artist never slept
without paying this last visit to his humble friend.
He stumbled up the steep tower stairs, and
after fumbling with the clumsy lock, the door
swung open and admitted him to his one room.
After groping about in the dark for a
moment he struck a light, and out of the embers
on the hearth blew a little flame.  He looked
about the small room and laughed; this was a
home, indeed, to which to bring a bride!  It
sufficed for him; and he asked for nothing more
commodious or luxurious than this old tower
in the corner of the ruined church, with its
grand north light and easy chair, its open fire
and pallet-bed.

If he married,--when he married, he corrected
himself, for he surely intended to marry
Millicent,--there would have to be great changes
in his life.  He would be obliged to abandon
his old tower, and live in a smug new house
somewhere, with fuss and worry about servants,
who would not please him half so well as did the
old wood-cutter John.  His work, ah, how that
would suffer!--no more of the pleasant
conscientious labor, the slow painting and study of
that one supreme moment of the day when the
golden copse was made tender by the light of
the setting sun.  He must hie him to the city
and pass his life in painting fat, over-fed
matrons in lace and diamonds, or expressionless
minxes with costumes indicative of youth and
ignorance.  He would, perhaps, relapse into a
mere mechanical portrait-painter, with as much
imagination as a photographer; and his pictures
would be ordered as theirs are, with the simple
difference that the artist produces but one copy,
while the photographer, with equal trouble, makes
a dozen or ten dozen, or a single picture.  He
sighed aloud, and for consolation lit his pipe.
He caught sight of the flower which had bloomed
on a fair bosom and was now fastened to his
coat, somewhat crushed but still fragrant.  He
carefully unpinned the rose and placed it in a
small vase of water, and then proceeded to
examine the books which Millicent had given
him.  Graham liked old books, and was
delighted with the yellowed parchment copy of
Petrarch.  An inscription on the cover showed
that it had once belonged to a monastery.  On
the fly-leaf was a slight sketch of a young monk's
head seen in profile.  It was a beautiful,
clear-cut face, with delicate outlines and an earnest
expression; beneath it was written, "Fra
Antonio, Aetat 22."

"So this was brother Antonio, and he lived
and died probably in the peaceful quiet of a
Roman monastery.  I wonder if he painted
too, or whether he wrote hymns to all the
pretty female saints in the calendar.  Brother
Antonio must have lived and died without a
helpmeet.  I fancy he did none the worse work
for that."

The thought struck him as ungrateful, and, as
if to make amends for it, he took up the other little
volume.  It was a thin book bound in white
vellum, with Millicent's name in illuminated text
upon its cover.  The covers of this small tome
were closed with a gold clasp, which he finally
succeeded in opening.  It proved to be a diary
in manuscript; he recognized the clear, delicate
handwriting of the girl he loved.  Yes, he loved
her tenderly; why else should he press the
senseless pages close to his lips, kissing the fair paper
over which her fairer hand had passed?  He drew
his lamp nearer to him and prepared to read the
record.  It was written in Italian, and the first
page bore a date five years back.  He was
somewhat puzzled, but supposed he had misunderstood
what she had told him of the book.  She
could have been but a child then; she was now
only just past her majority.  How pretty she
must have been at sixteen, before she had grown
to the perfect womanhood which now became
her so well!  He fancied her in all the shyness
and awkwardness of young maidenhood, with
childhood reluctantly slipping from her, and
girlhood anxiously leading her forward.  Again he
kissed the book, but reverently this time, and
with a deep sigh as if it had been a holy one.
If he could have known her then, before he had
grown to feel so old, before she had learned that
she was fair and young, how much easier it
would have been for both of them.  As he sat
with unseeing eyes fixed on the faintly traced
characters, beholding in fancy the little Millicent
of half-grown figure and cool, loveless eyes
stooping over the book, putting her white, childish
thoughts into these words, it seemed to him that
he heard a faint sound,--a sound that was
deeper than the wind stirring the tops of the
redwoods; a sound that made him shiver and
turn the bright flame of the lamp a little higher.
It was like a noise heard dimly in a dream, an
echo of a woman's sob ringing faint and muffled
through a space of years, was it, or of distance?
It had grown quite cold; and he heaped an
armful of brushwood on the dying fire, which soon
shot up the little chimney with a cheery roar,
and threw its bright light to the farthest corner
of the room, touching the picture on the easel,
bringing out the ugly little *netshukés* from their
shadowy corner, and shining on the polished
steel of the gun standing near the maulstick and
fishing-rod.

It must have been the wind, that faint sound
which had seemed to find an echo in the beating
of his heart.  He drew aside the heavy
window-curtains.  Outside in the cool moonlight he saw
the arms of the great trees swaying to and fro;
below these the desolate ruins of the old church;
all was quiet and deserted.  There was the
dismantled altar,--it was surely a trick of the
moonlight and the trees, that shadowy semblance
of a woman kneeling out there in the night, with
wild hair, and arms cast about the broken cross,
overturned this half century?  Yes, it was a
shadow surely; for a cloud passed before the
silver face of the half-moon, and when it had
floated by, the shadow of a female figure had
vanished.  He dropped the curtain and turned
with a sigh of relief from the mysterious
half-light, with its revelations of deserted chapels and
uncared-for altars, its shattered cross and
phantom penitent.  Inside his small domicile was
warmth and light; and to drive away the cold,
nervous feeling which had crept about him like
an invisible network, he again took up the little
parchment journal.  Again he seated himself,
and turned the first leaf.  As he read he smiled,
and occasionally turned over the sheets to see
how many more pages remained to be perused.
Presently the smile faded from his face; and the
flames on the hearth burnt low and finally died,
choked by the gray ashes.  And still Graham
turned the pages of the little journal with cold
fingers.  The lamp grew dim, and the moon
paled and sank beneath the horizon; the chill
morning twilight crept betwixt the hangings,
and showed him sitting cold and motionless to
the slow-coming dawn.  The last page of the
journal had been turned long since; but he still
held the book open, his eyes fixed on the final words.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Dearer than woman's love
   |  Is yonder sunset fading in the sky!"

.. vspace:: 2

After that night's vigil, Graham took his gun,
and packing a blanket and a few camping
utensils in his saddle-bag, mounted his horse and
rode away toward a hunting-lodge some twenty
miles distant, where he sometimes passed the
night.  His way led through the woods, where
the bracing air, the light footsteps of the
invisible animals, the fluttering of the birds in the
trees, served to turn his mind from the painful
thoughts of the past night.  He had a part in
this woodland life, and owned a kinship to the
four-footed and feathered creatures who made
the forest their home.  His spirit was lifted to
that close and intimate communion with Nature
which is only possible to man when unfettered
by human companionship.  The cool, spicy air
was sweeter than the kiss of maiden; the leafage
of the restless trees more tender than that of the
gold-bronze hair he had so often praised.  It
seemed to him that the only real thing in all the
fair sunny earth was himself; that the people
whom he had known were but pictures seen in
a dream.  He lived, and breathed the scent of
the pine-trees; he lived, and heard the cry of the
blue-jays in their branches; he lived, and his
eyes were filled with the glorious beauty of his
world,--all his, with nothing to come between
him and the fragrant Mother Earth.  All that
day he rode and walked through the tangled
paths and trackless thickets, holding communion
with sky and earth, content to live without
retrospection or anticipation.  Just before
sunset he shot a brace of quail for his supper; and
when dark shadows had crept through the
wooded places he built a fire on the hearth
of the little cabin where he proposed spending
the night.  It was a rude lodge, a trifle less
comfortable than French John's house, with
wooden bunks around the walls, and trunks of
trees roughly fashioned into seats.  Under a
certain board in the floor, known to him, was a
hiding-place wherein were stored half a dozen
tallow candles, with a bottle to serve as
candle-stick, a pack of cards, an iron pot and spoon,
a rusty jack-knife with a corkscrew, and, last
of all, a flask of brandy, which it was a matter of
honor always to leave half full.  The shed had
been built by himself and Henry Deering, and
was occasionally used by them and their friends
when on hunting expeditions.  As there were
no means of securely fastening so slight a
building, there was neither lock nor bar to door
or window.  Over the fireplace was tacked a
notice written in Deering's bold hand, which
read as follows:--

"Gentlemen are requested to put out the fire
and latch the door before leaving this shanty.
Water to be found three rods beyond this spot
to the north."

Graham found the candles, which he finally
succeeded in lighting; and after making a meal
of hard-tack and roasted quail, he filled his pipe
and sat down on one of the bunks, tired out by
his long day's ride.  The painful thoughts which
he had banished during the hours of daylight
now took possession of him; and the brow, which
had been calm all day, showed the three deep
dints which trouble more than time had furrowed
upon its noble expanse.  He was alone again!--no
more friendly sounds and sights to divert his
mind and fill his eyes with beauty.  Only his
sad thoughts and the one great problem which
was set before him to solve.  His changeful,
melancholy eyes were fixed vacantly on the floor.
They saw nothing but the shadowy vision of the
night,--the figure of a woman amidst the broken
altars of the old Mission church.  The words
which he had read in the little journal came
thronging back to him in riotous haste,--those
pitiful words of passionate grief traced by the
slender white fingers, which so lately had
lingered tremblingly in his own strong brown
hands.  Could he forgive her?  Poor child, poor
child!  What was he, that he had a right to
withhold his forgiveness for an instant?  Let their
lives be laid side by side, with every act and
every thought bared to his view, and how did
his life's record compare with hers?

Ah, if she had but told him the story, and
not left it to accident to reveal the secret!  She
had deceived him!  And the angry blood surged
from his heart to his brow and settled there dully
red.  The stern lines of his face grew harder
than the mask of a stone statue, and the expression
of the chiselled mouth was terribly relentless.
He would never see her again, never, never!
What he had felt for her was not that highest
passion which melts heart and soul and body in
one pure flame; for, without a perfect faith, such
love is not.  So he reasoned, pity and anger
sweeping across his soul; and then, forgetting both
in a great pain, he cried, stretching out his arms,
"Millicent, Millicent, come to me!"  At last the
wearied muscles and tired brain and heart slowly,
half-consciously yielded to a warm, close-folding
influence which straightened out the lines
on the brow, loosened the tight-drawn muscles,
stole the fire from the deep eyes and the anger
from the curved mouth.  The grand head, with
its thousand schemes and theories, fell back upon
the couch; the skilful hand, with its nervous,
delicate fingers, relaxed; a long, shivering sigh shook
the body; and, with the fire-light shining upon
his stern beauty, Graham slept.  The fire burned
low upon the hearth and finally flickered out,
leaving a bed of glowing ashes.  The quiet of
the night was broken by the long shrill wail of
the coyote, but Graham stirred not.  A light
footstep sounded near the cabin, and a scratching
noise might have been heard as the head of a
great bear was raised to the level of the window.
The sleeper's breath never quickened; and Bruin,
after a long look and a vain attempt to push the
door open, gave a growl and trotted off through
the underbrush toward his own cosey cave under
the rocky hillside near by.  A young owlet,
flying aimlessly through the night, flapped itself
through an opening in the roof intended to let
out the smoke; and finding it difficult to escape
by the place where it had entered, settled
itself comfortably near the sleeper, standing on
one foot, and meditatively regarding the strange
creature on the bed.  To all these noises
Graham was deaf; but when the clatter of a horse's
hoofs broke the silence, that strange
half-consciousness which gives warning of an
unaccustomed sound called his slumbering senses to
awaken.  In a moment he was perfectly conscious,
and, after feeling for his pistol, lay quietly
down again upon the hard couch.  The rider
might not pause at the shanty, and as he was in
no mood for company, he would give no sign of
his presence there until it was necessary.  The
hope was a vain one; he heard the rider call to his
horse with an oath to stop.  After a slight pause,
the door, which he had secured with a wooden
bar, was roughly shaken.  The new-comer,
finding the portal fast, now showed himself at the
little window and peered into the room.  Seeing
a recumbent figure, he cried out,--

"Who the ---- is in this shanty?"

"John Graham; and who is outside?"

After a pause the voice answered,--

"A man as wants a night's rest bad, and has
got as good a right to it as anybody."

"Put up your shooting-irons, Horton, and I
will open the door."

First striking a match and lighting his candle,
Graham unfastened the bar, and the light door
swung wide.  The figure out in the darkness
peered doubtfully into the room.

"Don't be afraid; I am alone," said the artist
coolly, seating himself upon his bunk, and
proceeding to fill his pipe.  The man came
cautiously into the cabin, looking about him once
more to make sure that Graham had spoken the
truth.  He was a rough-looking fellow, with a
sinister expression of countenance, in great part
owing to the deep scar which seamed his face
from temple to chin.

The stranger seemed a good deal disconcerted
at finding the artist ensconced in the lodge.

"Did n't expect to find anybody--least of all
you--in this shanty."

"I do not often occupy it; though I built it
myself."

"Is that so?  You ain't got a mouthful of
bread as yer'd let a man have as has fasted
since sunrise?"

Graham's answer was to hand him a couple
of rounds of hard-tack, which he quickly
devoured; and to pass his flask, filled with the
rough, strong wine from the vineyards of Los
Angeles.  The fellow poured half its contents
down his throat at one draught, wiping his mouth
upon the sleeve of his rough jacket.  Then,
with a nod of acknowledgment, he handed back
the flask with a regretful sigh, and seating
himself on the floor by the fireplace, warmed his
feet in the still hot ashes.

"You never came for those last sittings,
Horton; my picture is not finished yet."

"You see, I got another job more to my taste
than posturin'."

"Are you working in the neighborhood?"

"No; I am on my way to the Swindawl
mines.  Do you live in these yer parts?"

"Yes.  You know the old church?  I live in
the tower."

"Rum place, that; passed it to-day."

"If you want to earn a little money to pay
your travelling expenses, I should like to finish
that picture."

The man did not answer, but stretched his
great limbs and yawned.

"It's blasted cold for the season."

Graham nodded assent, blowing a great cloud
of tobacco-smoke from his lips, and composing
in his mind, meanwhile, a picture in which this
wild-looking fellow, with his rough hair and
coarse, strong outlines, formed the central figure.
He was of a low type of humanity, with a
narrow forehead and large, heavy features; his face
was tanned where the skin was visible, the heavy
beard growing high up on the cheeks, leaving
little uncovered surface.  His clothes were
somewhat dilapidated, but his wide sombrero hat and
high boots were strong and whole.  His figure
was superbly developed, and Herculean in type.
As he sat crouching on the floor, hugging his
knees, his back braced against the wall behind
him, he nodded wearily, and, after various
abortive attempts at conversation, finally fell into
a sound sleep, his head resting against the wall
behind him.  Graham took a charred brand from
the hearth, and with this rough tool drew, on a
smooth board in the side of the cabin, a sketch
of the man before him.  As he looked narrowly
at his model, he perceived that his face was
disfigured by some recent scratches from which
the blood was still unwashed.  They were got
while riding through a thorny thicket, the artist
fancied, and thought no more about them,
touching in the details of the desolate background.
The man's expression was hardly human in his
sleep, the fierce animal face was so stupid and
brutish.  It is wonderful how character is
expressed in a sleeping countenance.  The studied
or unconscious control which we hold over our
features when awake is overthrown in slumber,
and the real nature is seen with no polite
restraint or deceitful mask.  A beautiful woman is
beautiful no longer while sleeping, if she have a
bad heart.  It is a terrible thing to look upon
one who is dear to us in sleep.  Even when the
countenance shadows forth holy dreams, it is
awful to watch its still composure, so like death,
and to feel that impassable distance between the
unfettered soul and our own earth-bound spirit,--that
distance which, but for the briefest spaces,
is never bridged over in our whole lives, though
they flow quietly side by side through peaceful
days and happy nights.

Though the man had closed his eyes in the
knowledge that it was entirely safe for him to
sleep in Graham's presence, his slumber was not
an easy one.  He started often and groaned
more than once; while his hand nervously made
the movement of striking with a weapon at some
unseen foe.  The artist watched him for some
minutes.

"I should like to have another day's work on
that rascal's torso," he said at last; "I suppose
if I paid him enough he would come to the tower."

As he spoke he tore a leaf from his notebook,
and writing a few lines upon it placed it
in the fellow's nerveless hands, lest he should
steal away before morning.  Then he threw
himself back and slept again long and heavily.
When he awoke it was broad daylight in the
cabin of which he found himself the sole
occupant.  At first he wondered if he had dreamed
that his lodging had been shared by a rough
companion; but no, there was the sketch upon
the wall of the sleeping figure crouching by the
fireplace.  Besides, his visitor had left a trace
of his presence.  Near the spot where he had
sat lay a handkerchief.  The artist carelessly
picked up the square of white linen, somewhat
surprised to find that it was of the finest quality.
A red stain on one corner induced him to
examine it more carefully.  It was neatly stitched
with an odd pattern which was not unfamiliar to
him, and in one corner was an embroidered
monogram of an intricate form.  The letters
were cunningly twisted together, and it took him
several minutes to distinguish them.  Two L's,
an I, a T, an E, an N, and a C, all enclosed in a
large M.  Nobody in the world could have so
many initials, not even a Spanish grandee.  It
must be a name, probably one beginning with
M, as that was the most prominent letter in the
*chiffre*.  He studied it for an instant, and
suddenly cried aloud that name which had become
so dear to him,--"Millicent!"

What could it mean?  Millicent's handkerchief
in the possession of that ruffianly fellow,
the dark crimson stain of blood marring its
whiteness?  What could have befallen her?  He
dared not even think of what this portended;
and thrusting it into his breast, he ran to the
door and looked all about him.  Silence
everywhere; no movement in the copse before the
door; no trace of his late visitor save the broken
branch of a buckeye near which his horse had
been tethered.

Graham was a brave man, with nerves at once
sensitive and strong; but the picture which rose
before his eyes unmanned him for the moment
completely.  He leaned against the door-post
quaking with terror, too much confused to know
what next to do.  He could not think; he only
saw that villanous face before him in its heavy
sleep, that clinching of the hand, that motion as
of stabbing with a knife.  In the breast of
what victim had that weapon been buried?  At
the recollection of what crime had he groaned aloud?

The neighing of his horse in the thicket near
by roused him from the benumbing horror which
had bound him like a trance.  He mounted the
fiery animal, and struck him fiercely with his
spur.  The mustang darted forward at a
breakneck speed, and with flying hoofs carried his
rider over the steep trail which led from the
cabin to the house of the San Rosario Ranch.
It was a rude road, sometimes merely indicated
by signs on the trees, at other places worn by
the feet of cattle; it led through dry
river-courses and down precipitous planes, through
tangled brakes and over desolate, blackened
spaces where fire had passed and blasted the
trees, leaving them dead and gray, with naked
branches and bare roots.  No vegetation was
here; only black, dry soil.  It was a dangerous
journey, none too safe at any time; but neither
rider nor steed hesitated at sharp turns or steep
descents; and the pace slackened not, though the
horse foamed at the mouth and the man's face
and hands were cut to bleeding by the
low-hanging branches of the thorn-tree.  Twenty-five
miles, at the lowest rating, lay between the
cabin and the house.  How well Graham knew
the way!  How often he had passed over it with
Hal and O'Neil!--a jolly trio of sportsmen.  The
very day before he had loitered along the same
route, taking the whole day to accomplish the
distance, walking sometimes with his horse
following him, and never travelling at a greater
speed than an easy trot.  How different his
thoughts had been then, when he had fancied
that he had found a closer companionship than
that of a loving woman's heart.  Now he saw
not the trees nor the wood creatures,--only
that one villanous face, with its freshly bleeding
wounds, with its old scar red and ugly.

Five miles accomplished: here is the great
oak-tree which the lightning had struck half a
century ago; but twenty miles now lie before him.
Another landmark is passed,--the iron spring,
with its red mouth framed in green ferns, where
he had once journeyed to bring *her* a flask of
the strengthening water.  On and on they fly,
startling the birds in the thickets and the foxes
in their coverts, racing with the lazy breeze which
puffs slowly along and is soon left behind by the
horse's speed.  At the spring on the hillside,
where Millicent's hand had checked his shooting
of the deer, the rider draws rein and springs to
the ground; while the gasping horse stands for
a brief breathing-space, drawing long, painful
breaths.  Graham cools his heated brow in the
rocky basin, and gives his horse a mouthful of
the refreshing water.  Then they start away
again towards the house where so many happy
hours of his life have been spent; where he first
saw Millicent!  It is a terrible ride, and one
that the man never will forget to his dying day.
The anguish of doubt and fear, the awful pace at
which he rides, which makes every mile he
accomplishes seem like to be the last, will never
be forgotten by him in the quiet after-years.
Now but ten miles separate him from the
vine-clad house; quickly are they accomplished; and
in a space of time too short to be credited by
those towards whom he rides, he reaches the
high hill which looks down upon the valley.
The familiar look of the surroundings surprises
him.  A blue feather of smoke curls about the
red chimney; the trees in the orchard, the cattle
browsing on the hills, look just as he has seen
them a thousand times before; nothing betokens
any unusual state of affairs within the quiet
house.  The brave horse gathers himself
together for a last gallop; and the stones of the
hillside fly from his hoofs as man and beast
thunder down the rocky path which loses itself
in the wide farm-road at the edge of the orchard.
From this point he commands a view of Millicent's
window.  He gives a low groan as he
looks up for some sign of life,--the heavy blinds
are tightly closed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XII.

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..

   |  "Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
   |  The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence
   |  The life o' the building."

.. vspace:: 2

The breakfast table at the San Rosario Ranch
was usually a merry one; but on the morning
after what Hal had called Millicent's "magnetic
exhibition," the usual good spirits were missing.
Millicent took her accustomed place at Deering's
side; and Galbraith marked the extraordinary
change which she had suffered since she had
bade him good-night the evening before.  Her
face had blanched to a whiteness which made
the ebon lines of eyebrows and lashes seem
unnatural.  Her mouth was pale and contracted,
and her expression of horrified anticipation
reminded him of the look in the eyes of a deer at
bay.  What could have come to the girl? he
asked himself in dismay; with a strange
consciousness that whatever should befall her of
good or evil from that time forth would have to
him an interest beyond all else in the world.  She
ate her breakfast mechanically, and answered
all that was said in which she could be supposed
to have an interest.  She laughed once, too,
at one of Hal's jokes; but the sound was rough
and strained.  Mrs. Deering and Barbara,
occupied with some household complication, merely
noticed that Millicent seemed tired; and Hal put
her odd look and manner down to the score of
her being in love, which in his eyes accounted for
every freak or unexplained symptom of hers.

It had been proposed that the day should be
spent out-of-doors, at a place which Millicent
had long wished to visit,--the little island in the
river, below the deserted mill.  Galbraith had
remained to be of the party; and his two friends
had promised to ride over from the camp and
join them at the appointed place.  Just before
they started, old John arrived with a note to
Mrs. Deering from Graham, who wrote that he
should not be able to be of the party.  Hal and
Millicent drove together, as they had done on
that day when Graham, in accordance with
California etiquette, had stopped to kill the
rattlesnakes.  Old Sphinx was doing his best to keep
up with the mule team, when Millicent's
sensitive ears detected the sound of horses' hoofs
behind them.  Presently, through the thick cloud
of dust, she descried two horsemen riding at full
gallop towards them.  The sunlight and the
veil of dust made it impossible to see what
manner of men they were until Millicent observed
that each carried over his shoulder a long object,
which glittered in the sunlight.

"Have you brought your pistols?" she asked.

"Yes, Princess, but they are in the wagon.
I expected till the last moment that Graham
would turn up to take you, and that I should
drive the team.  Why do you ask?  There is no
danger of our being molested."

"Look at those men.  Are not those gun
barrels I see on their shoulders?"

"Yes; but they are probably peaceful hunters."

The young man spoke in a perfectly careless
tone, to reassure his companion; but Millicent
noticed that he occasionally looked behind him
as the riders gained on them.  Finally, as the
men drew near, Millicent saw the rider nearest
her shift the gun from his shoulder and rest it
across the saddle-bow, as if preparing to take aim.
Hal, who had seen the action, instantly called to
Millicent to catch the reins, and held up both his
hands.  By this time the men were close upon
them, and the one who had shifted his weapon
called out in a rough voice,--

"All right, boss; we know you ain't got no
money, and we don't want your life to-day."  His
companion laughed aloud, and striking
spurs to their horses, they galloped down the
high-road.  Hal laughed as heartily as the
supposed highwayman, saying,--

"Well, that's a greaser's idea of a joke, I
suppose.  Adventure number one has befallen
us with few bad consequences.  I don't think
you were half as frightened as you were the
other day by the snakes."

"No, I fancy I was not.  I should not much
mind being killed to-day."  This with a little,
bitter laugh.

"And why?  Let us wait till after luncheon.
Barbara has put up a capital venison pasty,--a
real English one, out of the Queen's own receipt
book."

"Well, we will wait for the pie, to please you."

The drive was accomplished with the usual
desultory chit-chat, Hal doing rather more than
his share of the joking.  As they passed the
little hovel, the wild children ran out, as they
had upon the day when they had visited the
camp in the woods; and soon the gray bridge
and the little island were reached.  The baskets
were unpacked and the luncheon spread upon the
grass by the time the guests arrived.  Among
them were O'Neil, Hartley, Ferrara, and
Mrs. Shallop, who had come over by the train; with
a party of people from the village, in whom
Millicent had never taken much interest.
Galbraith never left Millicent's side; sparing her the
necessity of talking by keeping up an incessant
stream of conversation which she heard vaguely,
and of which she understood not one word.  In
after days the import of all the young man said
came back to her; and she remembered the
quaint Indian legends, the reminiscences of life
on the two edges of the continent, with which
Maurice Galbraith kept the others of the party
from her side.  She realized what he was doing,
and knew that he only, in all the company,
understood and sympathized with her half-dazed
mood; and for his efforts he received more than
one little smile, sadder than tears.

This is one of the stories which the lawyer
told her:--

"In the old days, when Father Junipero and
his small band of priests and soldiers came into
the wilderness of California, with the cross
uplifted in one hand, the sword grasped in the
other, there lived on this island where we now
sit, a beautiful Indian maiden.  Her name was a
very long one, and its meaning in our language
is the Smile of the Morning.  She lived with
the old chief, her father, in a wigwam, where also
lived her sisters and brothers and various of her
cousins and distant relatives.  The old chief had
many daughters, but the Smile of the Morning
was his favorite child; and she it was who cooked
his food for him, when he did not eat it raw, and
brought him his bow and arrows when he started
on a hunting party.  The sisters of the favorite
daughter all found mates among the sons of the
tribe, but she lived alone with only the wild
bird in the madrone tree for her lover.  Her
sisters, each of whom carried a pappoose upon her
back, laughed at the Smile of the Morning, and
said that she would die without a husband; but
the girl did not mind them.  She was taller, by
a head, than any woman of the tribe; she could
charm the wild birds, and draw the feathers from
their tails to make head-dresses for the old chief
and ornaments for herself; she could dance
war-dances like one of the braves, only with more
grace; and when she told the stories which the
fishes in the river whispered to her, the old
chieftain nodded his head wisely and patted the girl
on the shoulder.  She should find a husband in
good time; but he must be as much taller and
stronger than the other men of the tribe, as she
was fairer and wiser than her sisters.

"When the missionary priests came, with
their white faces and strange garments fashioned
neither from the skin of any animal nor from
the feathers of any bird, and made friendly
overtures to the old chief, the Smile of the
Morning fell upon her face in terror.  The Indians
would have worshipped the men with the white
faces and strange tongue; but to prove to them
that they too were men and adored a God, the
priests held their services and kneeled to the
Great Spirit whom they reverenced.  When the
new-comers had learned the language of the
Indians, and had built themselves a house and a
greater house to their God, the daughter of the
chief grew to be no longer afraid of the
black-robed figures.  She eagerly learned the simple
lessons which they set for the people; and it
was because of the wonderful learning that they
gave her that she studied so industriously, and
not, like her brothers and sisters, to gain the
daily rations of corn.  When the early bell
called the Indians to the church of the San
Rosario Mission, the Smile of the Morning was the
first to answer the summons; and when the other
Indians were squabbling over their breakfast of
maize, she lingered in the sanctuary, trying to
fathom the strange rites which were so much
holier than those of her people, looking into the
painted faces in the pictures over the rude altar,
and feeling curiously behind them to ascertain
whether the backs also were painted.

"The soldiers who upheld the authority of the
priests were encouraged by large bounties and
grants of land to marry the converted squaws;
and in the course of time several such unions
were solemnized at the Mission.  Among the
stern old pioneer priests was one young man
dear to the Father Junipero, whose pupil he had
been, and who had followed the famous man on
his great mission of converting the heathen
Indians.  His name was Fra Antonio.  His voice
was soft and low, and his eyes open and sad,
with shadows in them, which the Indian maiden
had never seen in other eyes,--shadows like
those cast by the white clouds floating before the
sun's face on hot summer afternoons.  Fra
Antonio was very kind to the tall beauty of the tribe,
and with a never-failing patience strove to make
the doctrines of his religion clear to her simple
understanding.  Strange were the means by
which the fathers learned to expound their
religion to the savages.  To express the great hope
of the resurrection, they put a number of insects
in a vessel of water, leaving them there till they
were apparently quite dead.  Then the creatures
were placed in a bank of hot ashes, which
warmed their frozen, half-dead bodies back to
life.  When the gauzy wings were spread,
carrying the insects up into the sunshine again, the
fathers marked the words ejaculated by the
Indians, and by that term they called the resurrection.

"New and beautiful were the thoughts which
now possessed the mind of the Indian girl.  She
learned that to forgive was nobler than to
avenge,--strangest of all doctrines taught by the priests
to the red men.  She learned that the stars, pale
and fiery, were great worlds like the one in
which she lived, and not the hearts of the brave
chiefs placed in the heavens after death as she
had always been taught.  Only the simplest of
the great truths which lie like jewels in the
tawdry setting of the Mother Church, did Fra
Antonio instil into her childish mind, which with
an unquestioning faith accepted all the young
priest taught.  Few among the tribe--perhaps,
indeed, no one of the Indians beside the
Smile of the Morning--understood or believed
the new doctrines taught by the priests.  These
were satisfied that the rites of baptism and of
extreme unction were administered, and that
the daily services were attended, quite conscious
that their most potent weapon of conversion was
the ration of *atole*, or prepared corn, which they
served out to the lazy braves.  As soon as he
became a member of the church, every redskin
was cared for, and a gentle slavery was the
result, in which the priests exacted a certain
amount of labor from the Indian, in turn
feeding him and caring for his wants.  The art of
weaving was taught, together with civilized
agriculture; and the fruit of the vines was
fermented into strong, rough wine, this being
reserved for the service of the altar and the table
of the priests.  In the eyes of the zealous
missionaries the Indian was the rightful owner of
the soil; and there was no thought of disputing
his claim to it.  It was that he might better and
more wisely enjoy the fruits of his own land,
and in the next life enter the happier home
prepared for all true followers of the Church of
Rome, that the Father Junipero and his band
of soldiers and priests lived and died in the
wilderness of California.  How their treatment
of the original inhabitants of the soil differed
from that adopted by the enlightened race which
now claims the country, you have seen enough, or
at any rate heard enough, of our Indian policy
to appreciate.  Instead of improving the land
for its owners, as did the brave missionary
priests, we have wrested it from them, driving
the children of those who for centuries have
owned the Pacific coast away from the choicest
spots to rocky, desolate lands which have again
been taken from them by the greedy gold-hunters.
But all this has happened since the
time when the Smile-of the Morning lived upon
this pretty island, and decked her glossy hair
with a coronet of blue-jays' feathers, that she
might be fair in the eyes of one whom she
loved.  But a year had passed since the arrival
of Fra Antonio, when the old chieftain noticed
that his daughter's step had grown heavy and
slow; that her great eyes danced no more; that
her countenance no longer merited the name of
the morning's smile.  He was a wise old man for
an Indian; and after thinking the matter over
for a week, during which time he smoked an
unusual number of pipes of tobacco, he came to
the conclusion that the girl had been bewitched
by one of the strange priests.  Calling her to
him, he questioned her as to the cause of her
altered behavior; and from her downcast face
and embarrassed replies he quickly surmised her
secret.  The Smile of the Morning loved the
fair young priest, and it was for his sake that
her tears flowed.  The old chief at first scoffed
at her infatuation, and bade her take up with
one of her dusky suitors.  But the girl was
obstinate; and finally yielding to her whim, the old
chief himself offered his daughter's hand to Fra
Antonio.  The young priest, in holy horror, took
counsel with his superiors; and it was explained
to the chieftain that though the white soldiers
were free to mate with the maidens of the tribe,
the priests were vowed to celibacy.  If the pious
young priest had unwittingly mingled an unwise
fervor in his exhortations to the Indian girl, he
bitterly regretted his fault.  As day by day he saw
her elastic figure grow more feeble, and marked
her hollow cheeks and her sad eyes fixed reproachfully
on him whilst he served the mass or taught
the new converts, a tenderness for her, which
her savage health and perfections had failed to
arouse, awoke in his breast.  When he saw the
young braves, each with his dusky partner, and
the sisters of the Smile of the Morning with
their children in their arms, he sometimes
cursed the priestly habit which proclaimed him
a thing apart from all other of God's creatures,
doomed to live unmated and alone.  Long
vigils and heavy penances failed to ease the
grief in his heart, or to set at rest its
yearning toward the child who had been redeemed
from barbarism, through his teaching, to live
a Christian life and die in the hope of his faith.

"At last the battle between the spirit and the
heart grew too terrible for him to bear; he was
not strong enough; and he begged the fathers
to send him to another Mission far to the
northward.  When the Smile of the Morning learned
that Fra Antonio was to leave the Mission on
the morrow, she decked herself in all her jewels,
hung her long shell necklaces about her throat,
wound her bead bracelets about her arms, and
placed her coronet of blue-jays' feathers upon
her brow.  She was not to be found that night
when the old chief lay down to rest; and when
the sun rose on the day which should see Fra
Antonio far on his long journey, her sisters
found the maiden lying in the cool waters of the
river which washes this island, with the little
rosary the priest had given her locked in her
cold fingers, and the smile upon her face that
had been missing for so many weeks.  They
called the fathers to come and look upon her;
and Fra Antonio prayed long beside her, with
streaming eyes and broken voice.  The kiss
which his sad lips laid reverently on her brow
was felt perhaps, for all those who stood near
heard the sigh which came rustling through the
trees near by.  As she had wilfully taken her
own life, the poor girl could not be buried with
the ceremonies of the church to which she had
been admitted; so she was interred by her people
near the spot where they had found her, on this
little island where we now sit.  When the good
fathers sat together of an evening and discussed
questions spiritual and temporal touching the
welfare of their little flock, Fra Antonio was
often missing from their midst.  Sometimes the
faint sound was heard of the church bell softly
struck by a tender hand, and the priests crossed
themselves silently, knowing for whose soul it
was that Fra Antonio solemnized the mass for
the dead."

A silence followed Galbraith's story, which
was broken by Millicent, who said,--

"I have a sketch in an old Italian book of a
beautiful young monk, Fra Antonio by name.
Could it be the same, I wonder?"

"Who knows?  Some of the priests were
Italians.  Would the dates agree?"

"The portrait was dated some time in the
latter part of the last century."

"It could not have been far from that time
that the Smile of the Morning met her sad fate."

"Sad,--do you call her fate sad?" queried
Millicent.

"Who could think it otherwise?"

"I surely do.  Was it sad to die for the man
she loved?"

"It would have been happier if she could have
lived for him."

"Happiness!  Who spoke of happiness?  Why
talk about a thing so mythical?  I think her lot
was an enviable one.  To her simple mind the
thought that suicide is sinful could never have
occurred.  She might not follow the man she
loved; she believed that the soul now prisoned
in her breast might always be near him; so she
opened the cage and let the bird fly."

"You speak as seriously as if you had known
the Smile of the Morning and sympathized with her."

"It is the privilege of those who have greatly
suffered, that the grief of others can be felt and
understood by them."  Millicent spoke absently,
dreamily, checking her speech at the pained
expression which her words brought to Galbraith's face.

Later in the afternoon the party left the island
and wandered about the old bridge.  Some of
them climbed the high hill; others struck into
the woods.  By some chance Millicent found
herself left alone near the mill with no one of the
party near her save Ah Lam.  Calling the
faithful creature to her side, she made him prepare
her a comfortable seat, and leaning back against
the wall, she entered into a desultory
conversation with her pupil.  Ah Lam often told her
stories in his broken English, descriptive of the
power and character of the most august
personages of the Chinese mythology.  To-day he found
an inattentive listener in his kind friend and
teacher; but he had been bidden to speak, and so
he talked on patiently, describing rites of death
and feasts of marriages, recalling the great river
*fête* which he had witnessed shortly before
sailing from his native city.  As the Chinaman
paused after this last tale, Millicent heard a step
approaching the door of the old mill.  She looked
up carelessly, expecting to see one of the
gentlemen.  The man who stood before her was a
stranger.  His face was somewhat flushed, and
he looked as if he had travelled some distance.

"Second time, my lady, I've see'd yer purty
face to-day."

Millicent bowed her head and turned away,
looking anxiously toward the wood, where she
had seen Hal disappear a few moments before.

"Sha'n't let yer off ser aisy this time.  I've
took a fancy to see the color of yer eyes."

The look of angry indignation with which the
gray orbs were turned upon the man was enough
to have abashed any sensitive person, but to
this class the stranger did not belong.  He was
a rough-looking fellow of large stature, with a
heavy animal face, crossed by a deep scar
running from the chin to the forehead on the right
side.  In his belt he wore a pair of pistols, at
which the Chinaman looked uneasily.

"Say, do yer belong in these parts?"

"Yes," answered the girl in a low voice.

"Well, I am leavin' 'em for good; we're not
likely to meet again.  I 'm a gentleman, and I
don't want to trouble you for them rings o'
yourn, but a kiss won't cost you nothin'."

Suiting the action to the word, the man threw
an arm about the girl's slender waist, and quick as
a thought began to drag her toward the spot where
a couple of horses were tethered.  With a
sudden wrench, she shook herself free from his rude
clasp, and sped down the path calling for help.
Help was nearer to her than she had thought,
and a humble friend sprang to her aid.  As the
insolent creature started in pursuit of the
swift-footed girl, Ah Lam adroitly tripped him up,
bringing him to the ground with a heavy fall.
The man was somewhat bruised by his tumble,
a sharp stone having struck his arm.  He arose
with difficulty, pouring out a volley of oaths the
like of which had never before desecrated
Millicent's ears.  The Chinaman, knowing full well
the danger which his temerity had brought upon
him, ran quickly after his young mistress.  The
path brought them to the border of the stream,
and their flight was stopped by this obstacle.
By this time, the man, blind with rage, had
caught up with the two fugitives; he seemed in
doubt which of them to molest first.  Millicent
stood with flashing eyes and curling lip, her
head thrown back, her arms folded across her
breast, looking at him with an expression of scorn
that seemed to awe him for a moment.  He
drew back, as if afraid to touch so beautiful and
wrathful a creature, and in his rage clutched the
Chinaman by the throat.  In the scuffle which
ensued, Ah Lam's hat was thrown off, and the long
cue coiled about his head fell down.  Quick as
thought, the ruffian seized the braid, and drawing
a sharp knife from his boot, cut it from the head
of the Chinaman.  With a shriek which had the
despair of a double death, the Chinaman turned
and implanted his finger-nails in the face of his
adversary, inflicting ten long scratches on the
cheeks.  The crushed worm will turn at last;
and the poor soul, damned for eternity by the
cutting of his hair, had turned upon the ruffian.
Quick as the fast-drawn breath of the terrified
girl, the villain lifted his long knife and, with a
horrible oath, plunged it into the side of the
Chinaman.  The shrieks of the victim, the
horror-stricken screams of the girl, the sight of the
blood, seemed to madden the wretch; for he tore
the quivering knife from the wound and stabbed
him again and again.  At last the rage for
blood seemed satiated; he threw the mutilated
body, still breathing, to ebb out its life on
the soil, and turned with bloody hands and seared
eyes toward Millicent, who had sunk upon her
knees, lifting the head of the dying Chinaman
to her young breast.

The closed lids fluttered open, the dimmed
eyes looked gratefully for the last time into the
face of the girl who had been kinder to him
than any other creature in this strange land
where he had worked so faithfully, where he
had been so cruelly oppressed in life, and so
foully murdered; hope of Heaven being closed
to him before his miserable breath had been
taken.  The horror of his crime must have
overcome the ruffian for a moment, for he paused
and silently watched the death-agonies of his
victim.  To that moment's feeling of horror or
remorse, what might not Millicent owe?  For
soon, to her it seemed an eternity, the men,
whose answering shouts she had not heard,
appeared close at hand.  The murderer saw them
none too quickly for his safety, and springing
upon his horse, which stood near by, clapped
spurs to the flank and rode off at a hand gallop
in the opposite direction.

Galbraith rushed to Millicent's side and lifted
the dying creature from her breast.  They
placed him gently upon the bank, and Hal put
his flask to his lips; but it was too late.  With
one last struggle Ah Lam yielded up his
miserable life; and Millicent's cry of pity sounded
his death-knell.  Then she lifted her hands to
Heaven and prayed for the soul of the poor
creature who had so bravely defended her.  An
hour ago she had smiled at Fra Antonio's
masses for the repose of the Smile of the
Morning.  In moments like these the strong instincts
of men and women overcome the reasons and
doctrines of education; Millicent prayed,
believing that she should be heard.

When it became evident to the little group
which had silently assembled about the spot,
that poor Ah Lam was beyond human help,
Maurice Galbraith and Henry Deering lifted the
lifeless body and laid it in the great wagon.
Millicent followed and drew over the dead face
the white cloak which she had worn all that
day.  Pedro, climbing to his seat, touched the
mules into motion; and the wagon, which had
carried so merry a freight to the gray bridge
that morning, returned at sunset over the same
path with its ghastly burden,--a very funeral car.

Maurice Galbraith gently placed Millicent
beside Barbara and her mother in the smaller
carriage, which was driven back to the Ranch
under the escort of Ferrara, O'Neil, and
Hartley.  Then the young lawyer, with Henry
Deering to bear him company, started in pursuit
of the murderer.  He had sworn a silent oath,
as he stood by the dying man, and learned that
his life had been given to protect Millicent,
that Ah Lam should be avenged.  If there
were law and justice in the broad land of
California, the murderer should surfer the extreme
penalty for wilful and wicked shedding of
innocent blood.  In pursuit rode the two young men,
with stern faces; and it was well for the fugitive
that he had a long start of them, for they rode
as men do when time must be gained at all costs.
Along the narrow bridle-path, over which the
murderer had passed, they took their way, and
were soon lost to the view of the three women
sitting close together in troubled silence.
Barbara's strong hands held the reins and plied the
whip, while streams of tears coursed down her
cheeks.  Mrs. Deering patted her daughter's
shoulder; but it was on Millicent her attention
was most firmly fixed.  The girl had not moved
since Galbraith had placed her in the carriage.
Her eyes were strained wide open, and the
expression in their depths was one which the
gentle woman never forgot,--a look as of an
endless despair and horror.  Back to the happy
valley they drove silently, no joyous young voices
carolling out ballads of love, songs of battle, as
was their wont; in silence and grief they passed
over the familiar road through the gap between
the guardian hills, back to the quiet house, to
herald the advent of the humble dead to those
who had been his fellow-servants.

No one told Millicent that standing near the
spot where the ruffian's horse had been tethered
was a second steed.  A strong mustang saddled
and bridled was found there.  A heavy leading-rein
passed through the bit, and a stout rope
lying over the saddle, gave a sinister significance
to the fact.  For whom had that horse been brought?





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.. _`CHAPTER XIII.`:

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   CHAPTER XIII.

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..

   |  "Abroad it rushed,
   |  My frolic soul, for it had sight
   |  Of something half-way, which was known
   |  As mine at once, yet not mine own."

.. vspace:: 2

It was early in the morning for Millicent, usually
a late sleeper, to be in the garden among the
flowers.  There Graham found her, white as the
gown she wore, standing with her arms filled
with dark-red roses,--standing with the
sunlight touching her pretty hair, and shining in her
cool gray eyes.  He stared at her, as at one
risen from the dead; he touched her hand
before he spoke to her, to make sure that it was
really she, alive, with softly heaving breast and
warm, clinging fingers.  Alive, and not as he
had pictured her a thousand times during that
terrible ride,--cold and dead, with the stain
which had dyed her kerchief, on brow and
bosom.  For a long time they stood silently
looking into each other's faces; and then the
man laid her hand gently on his arm, and
together they passed down the orchard road, across
a space of sunburnt meadow, to a spot they
both knew,--Millicent's boudoir, hanging over
the narrow stream, walled by six tall redwoods
grown from the seeds of some giant predecessor,
carpeted with thick green moss, furnished
with two rough seats.  Here they rested silently
for a time,--Graham drawing long breaths of the
morning air to relax his tired lungs; Millicent
resting her wearied heart with looking at him, all
her soul shining through her eyes.  Graham first
broke the silence with questions of all that had
happened since they had parted.  She told him
of her danger, and of the murder of the
Chinaman, in a low voice, full of awe.  It had been
her first knowledge of death; and the chill reality,
the only certain thing which men look forward
to, had first been known by her now that she was
a woman grown, and could fully understand its
dreadful significance.  Hitherto, death had been
a phrase only; a thing which must come to
all creatures, as a matter of course.  That she
should sometime die she knew, but only by
tradition; it had meant nothing to her.  Now she
understood it all, and the terrible knowledge had
chilled her life-blood.  Could she ever again think
of anything but that dead face?  One stronger
than the King of Terrors was driving it from her
thoughts: love was swiftly painting out the grim
picture from her memory.

Step by step they went over the ground of
their mutual experiences since the time when
they had parted: the picnic, and its tragic
ending; the night which Graham had passed in the
cabin with Ah Lam's murderer,--for there could
be no doubt it was he who had dropped
Millicent's handkerchief in the hut.  Of the little
journal Graham spoke sadly, gently, without anger,
as if it were a thing which concerned neither of
them.  Then Millicent brokenly told the story
which the written words had simply indicated.
She told it with a sense of thankfulness that the
weight of the secret rested no longer on her
heart alone; that its pain was shared, and that
at last her lover understood and saw her
absolutely as she was.  No reservation did she make,
but bared to him the inmost chambers of her
heart, sure of no misunderstanding, and upheld
by a sympathy she had never before known.
Then her confidence was returned, and Graham
spoke to her of many things of which he had
never spoken before; of the hopes and
aspirations which had sometimes made his life
glorious; of the quicksands and hidden rocks which
had often made his way dangerous.

A wonderful confession,--solemn as those
first confessions made by men and women who
at maturity join the Roman Catholic Church, and
unflinchingly reveal to the confessor every
temptation to which they have yielded in the course
of their lives.  To no mumbling, inattentive
priest, with store of penances and absolutions
in his pocket, was the confession made; in no
stifling confessional, with throng of penitents
outside, grudging every moment of delay.  Each
spoke to a tender human heart, that filled out
the broken sentences, and echoed the deep sighs.
The roof of their temple swayed in the light
breeze, and the wild birds chanted the hymn
of praise which consecrated it.

As Millicent at last sat silent, not knowing
whether her lover still spoke to her in words,
or if that finer language of the spirit made his
thoughts clear to her, came at once a strange
consciousness that she was no longer a creature
of this earth, with material senses and shape.
The last words which she had spoken she
remembered as one dimly recalls what has
happened in another life.  They were these:--

"Are you sorry for me?"

There had been no answer in words or in
looks; for the power of sight had been left
behind with the outer case, now shaken off for the
first time since life upon the earth had begun.
She was a thing apart no longer; her existence
had become merged in that of a stronger soul,
to which she was an all-important part.  Folded
in this spirit-embrace time was not, nor past nor
future; nothing but the perfect ecstasy of a
union which eternity should consecrate.  Floating
on a celestial ether, the double soul mounted
ever higher and higher.  Was it toward eternal
bliss that it was wafted?  Was the long waiting
at an end?

Again she saw the sunlight; again she heard
the ripple of the water; again she felt the earthly
tenement closing about the divine spirit.  Before
her, framed in the green leaves, was a face dear
indeed, the face of her lover.  With solemn eyes
they looked at each other; and a broken voice
whispered to her,--

"Dear, what is it?"

She answered softly,--

"I have never been so near to you before."

Then a flood of feeling swept over her, and
she would have knelt to him, her other self; but
he was already at her feet, moved by that same
instinct to do homage to the human form which
held his counter soul, and on her white feet he
laid a reverent embrace.

Strengthened and uplifted by that mystic
union whose memory should never leave her,
whose bonds should ever bind her, was Millicent.
In every existence comes one supreme, all-important
moment, which thenceforth is the landmark
by which life is measured; the climacteric
point to which the past merely served to lead, the
future availing only to enshrine its memory.  To
some men and women the significance of that
moment is known only when it has long passed;
to Millicent, the knowledge that her whole after
life should be controlled by that hour was not
wanting.  And her lover,--would he be faithful
to that unspoken vow?  The thought never
crossed her mind; she was irrevocably bound to
him; priest and rite could but make a poor,
earthy contract between what was mortal in
them both; the spiritual union was not for this
world, and might not be broken by either.





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.. _`CHAPTER XIV.`:

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   CHAPTER XIV.

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..

   |  "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
   |  The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned."

.. vspace:: 2

It was a pitiful story which the little journal had
made known to John Graham,--the story of a
woman grievously wronged, cruelly deceived.

Millicent Almsford's life had not been a
happy one.  Her childhood had been lonely,
and she had none of those early recollections
which are so comforting in after years to people
more fortunately bred.  Her father was an
invalid and a bookworm, and looked upon his
only daughter as a creature to be fed, clothed,
educated, and kept quiet.  Her feeding he
intrusted to her faithful nurse, who had promised
her dying mother never to leave the child till
she should be grown to womanhood.  Her
wardrobe was ordered by a relative who lived in Paris,
and who twice a year overlooked the making and
packing of her clothes, from her first baby
wrappings to the ball dress in which she was
presented at the court of St. James.  Her education
he left very much to chance and her own taste,
simply locking up the *livres defendus* of his
library, and telling her English governess to order
any necessary volumes from Mudie's.  The young
woman in whose charge Millicent was placed,
was more eager to learn Italian than to teach
English; to explore the literature of Dante than
to familiarize her pupil with the British authors.
When Millicent was sixteen years old, the feeble
protection of this governess was taken from her;
the woman returning to England to keep a long
protracted marriage engagement with her own
cousin.  The same year old Nina died; and
then it was that the lonely girl fell under the
influence which was to darken her destiny and
turn aside the natural current of her life.
Millicent Almsford, at that age, was a very peculiar
and interesting study.  Her mind had eagerly
grasped much more material than it could
master.  Her vivid imagination and great talent for
music were, with a love of beauty, the most
strongly developed traits in her nature, whose
intellectual growth was destined to be slow and
late; whose spiritual existence had not yet
begun.  An exquisite native refinement and a
perfect taste were among her most interesting
qualities.  Singularly attractive and strangely
incomplete, she had formed few relations; and
her friendship with Edward Holworthy, the man
whose influence so marred her life, was the first
strong feeling which she had known.  He was
her opposite in character, and knew life only
through people, while she had lived purely in
ideas.  Her complex nature, unfathomable to
herself, was to him a novel and engrossing study,
and it was through him that she learned to
understand one side of it.  The man found a great
heart which had never loved; a strong power for
working good or evil; a bold mind, that feared
not to grapple with the deepest problems of life;
and a possibility of absolute devotion to a
resolution once formed, which is rarely found among
young women.  He became her mental guide,
and directed her readings; with a certain clever
intuition bringing her under the influence of
minds as sophistical and frivolous as his own.
Sympathetic to an extreme degree, her nature
quickly took from his the color of an
exaggerated cynicism, which was sometimes strongly
shaken by the inner spirit which still slept
under the untouched heart.  Platonics, where
the man is of the world wise, and the woman
foolish with the innocence of childhood, are
dangerous things, as he knew full well, and she
did not.  In pointing out the forces which mould
the lives of men and women, what theme is so
often upon the lips of two life students of
opposite sexes as that of love?  To the girl it seemed
a strange, rather interesting force, whose power
it would not be unpleasant to test; and when
one day her mentor confessed to her that she
had bound him irrevocably by those bonds which
he had taught her were but ropes of sand, she
smiled half sadly, but in her heart laughed with
childish merriment.  She now should see the
actual workings of that strange hallucination;
she should learn something of what love was.
She was as unfeeling as a young lioness, and
learned the lesson of making him turn pale and
red by turns, as quickly as she had learned the
knack of touching the chords of her mandolin.
She looked upon her quondam friend in the light
of an invalid, suffering from a dangerous but
non-contagious malady.  And so things went on;
the man gaining every day a firmer hold over
the girl, intoxicated by the new power in herself
and a growing consciousness of her beauty and
charms.  During the long mornings at the
Palazzo Fortunio, the two friends read and talked
together, while the Italian governess, understanding
no word of their intercourse, sat sewing
patiently beside them.  In the cool afternoons,
when they were rowed by the strong-armed
gondolier, Girolomo, out into the glory of the
sunset, the same stolid companion always
accompanied them.  One day, Mr. Almsford, selfish
old epicurean, perceived for the first time that
his daughter had grown to a tall and fair
womanhood.  His attention had, perhaps, been first
called to the fact by the increasing size of the
half-yearly coffer which found its way from
Fashion's capital to the Fortunio Palace, and by the
proportionate lengthening of the account which
accompanied it.  Yes, Millicent was certainly
grown to be a young lady.  They were beginning
to send her little, demure bonnets, and
close-fitting, simple woollen dresses, made with
more of an idea of displaying her graceful figure
than heretofore.  The girl was heiress to her
mother's fortune; and it behooved him to see
about finding a suitable husband for her.  Whom
should he consult in this matter, but their most
intimate friend; the man who seemed at once
his contemporary and hers; the handsome, clever
fellow-countryman, who had been on the most
intimate footing in his house for the last ten
years?  Edward Holworthy had started
unaccountably when, in the midst of one of the solemn
pauses of their game of chess, Mr. Almsford had
propounded the unexpected question to him:--

"How shall I find Millicent a husband?"

The elder gentleman, for the first time in
many months, checkmated his adversary in two
moves, and won the game in an unprecedentedly
short space of time.

Holworthy's advice was given after a week's
deliberation.  It was in favor of sending Miss
Almsford to her father's sister, who lived in
London, in order that she might be presented
at court and introduced to English society.
Mr. Almsford thought over the advice, which
appeared to him wise.  He consulted Millicent,
who eagerly accepted the chance to see
something of the world; and finally, after six months'
exchange of letters upon the subject, the girl
was taken to London by her father, and
comfortably established, with her aunt, in a pretty
Kensington villa, for which her poorly
circumstanced relative gladly forsook a small house in
an unfashionable quarter of the town.  Having
married a younger son of a great house, with
no portion but debts on his part and beauty on
hers, Millicent's aunt, with the matchless tact of
our countrywomen, had secured herself a
prominent and agreeable position in London society.
In mere worldly advantages the young girl could
have had no better chaperone than the pretty
young woman, still occupied with bets, beaux,
and bon-bons.  She took her niece to all the
best houses; and soon Millicent's extreme beauty,
and the widely noised, somewhat exaggerated
accounts of her worldly goods, brought her scores
of invitations and admirers on her own account.

Six months after her departure, Millicent
Almsford returned to the Palazzo Fortunio, where the
report of her great social success had preceded
her and tickled the ears of her parent, proud of
the child for whose sake he had never sacrificed
a whim of his own.  Edward Holworthy, who
had accompanied the father and daughter to
London, and remained there during the period
of the latter's stay, did not return to Venice, but
sailed for Australia, from whence he never
returned either to his native or to his adopted
country.  The change which her half year's absence
had wrought in Millicent, her father attributed
to her social experience.  She had left him half a
child, with a thousand absurd, whimsical ways,
which had amused him, and endeared her to him
more than any other trait in her character.  Few
things diverted him; and he counted every laugh
which Millicent provoked from him as a positive
good, which he set down to her credit in their
joint account.  Her stay in London had given
Millicent a certain poise and manner which
suited her marvellously well; but all the sparkle
and freshness seemed to have left her.  She was
like a fresh, white lily which has been broken and
wilted by a violent storm of wind and rain.  For
months she never smiled.  Her life seemed to
have come to a standstill; she suffered dumbly,
hopelessly, with sad, deep eyes, made more
beautiful by the trouble in them.  A sceptic and a
materialist, she found nothing in this world
worth suffering for, and smiled incredulously
when the old curé, her Latin teacher, tried to
help her from the slough of earthly despair by
promises of a glorious future, for whose
attainment the life-battle should be bravely fought.
She was conscious of no ethereal essence which
should outlive the graceful body, whose beauty
she sometimes cursed.  Did it not reduce her
to the level of all hunted creatures?  Was she
not a thing to be pursued by men, like a tall
deer or a fleet, timid hare?

"Something had come to the Signorina," said
Girolomo, the gondolier; "and the Signor
Holworthy, where was he?"  And he shook his head
gravely, the wise old creature, guessing, as did no
other soul, that Edward Holworthy was in some
way connected with Millicent's changed face and
listless demeanor.

Something had come to her; but she never
confided to priest or friend the trouble which robbed
her young face of its childish curves, which
killed the youth in her, and made her a woman
in grief, while she was still a child in years.
Only one confidant had she,--the little
journal; the gold-clasped tome which all those years
after had fallen into John Graham's hands.  The
story of the first passion she had ever roused,
read by the only man she had ever loved.

It was the pitiful story of a grievous wrong
which had darkened more than one life.  The
miserable consequences of a wicked act are infinite;
its influence spreads wider and wider every
day, like the broadening rings which circle on
the surface of a still pool disturbed by a stone
which a careless hand has tossed.  The black
deed may be hidden from the sight of men, but
its baleful effects are felt afar off in the lives of
those who have known nought of its perpetration.
Let not the sinner comfort himself in that his
soul alone is damned for his crime.  It darkens
innocent lives with its evil; and in sinning
against himself he sins against mankind.

In the strange country whither Millicent had
gone, Holworthy was the only link which bound
her to her home, the one being who understood
and cared for her.  The dominion which he
had always held over her was now strengthened
into a powerful magnetic force.  The little
journal told how that influence had been
exerted in compelling her to a secret marriage
against her own will and judgment.  She had
been tricked into an elopement,--it might
better be called an abduction,--and all unwillingly
became his wife.  Then all too soon, ere a week
had passed, came the terrible discovery that the
marriage was no marriage.  For then came to
her the mother of the man whom she was
striving to love with wifely duty, an old woman,
bowed with grief and years.  She had come very
far, across half a continent, to break to the girl
whose name she had heard linked with that of
her only son, the news that he was not free to
marry, that she must give him up.  When the
tall girl with the childish, flower face fell stricken
to the earth like a broken lily, at the feet of the
older woman, she had made no cry; in the hours
that followed, she said no word.  When the man
who had wrecked her life came and knelt beside
her, prayed her to be patient and her wrongs
should be righted, spoke of his remorse, told
her of his terrible mad wife from whom the law
would set him free, and make him really hers,
prayed, besought, and worshipped at her feet,
she answered him with one terrible word only.
She rose and stood before him white and cruel
in her agony, relentless as Fate.

"Go!" was the one syllable which her frozen
lips uttered; and with a gesture of command,
majestic and beautiful, she had banished him
from her presence.  The secret was kept, even
from the old woman, grown more sorrowful at the
sight of the girl's dumb agony and of her son's
grief, which she could not soothe.  The secret
was kept; and that very night Millicent's face,
pale and clouded, shone out amidst a group of
fair women who sat languidly chatting through
the music of *Faust* at the opera.  He kept her
secret, poor wretch, and shielded her as best he
might, forcing her to speak to him and see
him before others, that no sudden breaking of
their relations might be remarked.  Save in the
world, she never saw him again.  That one
word of command was the last syllable which he
ever heard her speak to him directly.  Not
without a struggle did he give her up, but she was
implacable.  She yielded to him, and played
her part in the little comedy which the world
thought it understood.  The beautiful Miss
Almsford had found Holworthy a pleasant
admirer, but her delicate American beauty and
her solid American fortune would certainly win
her a higher place in the world than that of the
wife of Mr. Edward Holworthy, her countryman
and old friend.

Youth and health are great physicians; and as
the years passed, Millicent recovered something
of her old spring and elasticity.  She was
infinitely more interesting, if something colder and
harder, than she had been in the old days.  Her
unquenchable vigor of temperament came to her
help, and gave her a keen pleasure in her studies
and in the work and thought of the people about
her.  Always self-reliant, she grew to live
entirely without support from man or woman.  She
was a friend to many people, but was herself
friendless.  The Palazzo Fortunio, under her
reign, grew to be the centre of a charming social
circle.  Musicians and painters were made
welcome by the young hostess.  At once an artist
and a patron of the arts, she stood in a peculiar
relation to the men who frequented her *salon*.
If she had been without fortune she would have
made music her profession.  As it was, she
studied it as faithfully as if self-support had
been her aim; and she claimed that sympathy
from her artistic friends which a mere
connoisseur, be he ever so enthusiastic, can never
arouse.  To her small world she was all-important.
Her sympathy helped many a timid *debutante*,
and her counsel cheered the black days
of more than one disheartened artist.  Always
gracious and kind, she had drawn about her
a group of people, to all of whom she was a
sort of exalted fellow-worker, who knew but the
poetry of art, and helped them to forget its
prose.  Her heart was quite empty, but her
mind was keenly interested and fully occupied
by the men and women among whom she lived.
Happiness she had forgotten to look for, but in
enjoyment her days were not wanting.  It was a
terrible blow to her when this pleasant, quiet life
was suddenly broken up by her father's marriage.
To her imperious nature the presence of the
inferior woman whom Mr. Almsford had brought
home to the Palazzo was intolerable.  Where
could she go?  For the first time in her life she
felt the power which her fortune gave her.  She
could establish herself wherever she liked.  Her
father's sister proposed a repetition of their joint
establishment in London, but at the very
mention of her returning to England Millicent's
face blanched.  She would never again set foot
in that country.  It was while she was in a state
of doubt concerning her future movements that
her half-brother wrote her a long and affectionate
letter, urging her to come and dwell for a
time among his people, to visit her mother's
country before she decided the important
question of where she should establish herself for
life.  The idea seemed a just one to her; and
acting on a tender impulse roused by the loving
words of her unknown brother, she had telegraphed
her departure, and forthwith started on
her long journey accompanied by her capable
French maid.  The Abigail discharged her trust
faithfully, as far as San Francisco, from which
city she turned her face on the very day of her
arrival, unwilling to remain longer in what she
called "*le plus triste pays du monde*."  If the
truth could have been known, Millicent would
have signed away ten years of her life to have
gone back with the woman to the Old World,
the only home she had ever known.

Graham had not been mistaken when he
predicted to Millicent that she would grow more in
sympathy with the race from which she drew
her inheritance of character and temperament
than at first seemed possible.  Nature is stronger
than habit, well called second nature; and as the
surface roughness became familiar to her, she
began to feel the strong life and vigor of the
young Western land quickening her pulses and
stimulating her whole being.  The poverty of
intellectual intercourse was more than
compensated by the tremendous power of work, the
electrical force which accomplishes so rapidly in
this new land what in other countries has been
the slow growth of centuries.

An answering glow of enthusiasm flushed her
with hope, with a keener, fuller, more intense
life than she had ever known before.  She had
clung at first to her traditions, and fought
against the tide which seemed to be sweeping
this people on and on and ever on.  But nature
was too strong for habit; her upright, fearless
mind acknowledged kinship with these
hard-working men and women, to whom pleasure is
not save in toil, whose whole life is one long
unconscious sacrifice to their country.  On the
eastern margins of our land the austere simplicity
and purity have become infested with plague-spots
brought--ay, imported with care and
expense--from the Old World, and fostered like
exotics on the clean soil.  But from the great
Western prairie comes a fresh, strong breeze
which sweetens all the foulness of the Atlantic
cities, and makes the breath of Columbia still
pure and fragrant.

With this new sentiment for her new-found
country came the first passionate love to the
heart of the beautiful and unhappy young woman.
She had breathed the spicy air of the Californian
forests, bracing and sweet, and her cheek had
grown fuller and fairer in the perfect climate.
Her empty, hollow heart was filled by a great
love and strength, all-sustaining and soothing.

When Graham had first seen her lying in the
fire-light, with cool, deep eyes, before the light
of love had dawned in her flower face, she had
seemed to him like a perfect white rose.  Then
the rose flushed palely, as the love-light
trembled to a flame; and he brought her flowers
of the color of the sea-shells, and she wore
them in her hair.  Last of all, he laid at her
feet deep-red damask rosebuds; and these she
placed on her white breast, where they bloomed
and died in a single night.  He had painted
her by the waves, as he had once seen her
on that strange day when death had seemed
so near and life so beautiful.  He had painted
her standing at the sea edge with pallid roses in
her little hands, her graceful head set about with
the same soft-hued flowers, and a single crimson
rose lying lightly over her heart.  He had hung
the sketch against the wall where the sunlight
fell upon it early in the morning; and Millicent
had bade him remember, while he slept or waked,
that she was near him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XV.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "It cannot be that love so deep as mine
   |  Could fail to stay you like ethereal wine."

.. vspace:: 2

When he first understood the full import of the
dreadful story, John Graham had been dazed
with grief.  He had sought distraction from his
torturing thoughts in action, and had spent that
first day in wandering through the forest.  When
he lay down to sleep that night in the lodge, his
heart was burdened with the double weight of
Millicent's secret and Millicent's deceit.  He
said to himself that they had put an insuperable
bar between her and himself.  He could have
pardoned the disgrace which had befallen her,
and was not her fault, but he could never forgive
her deceit toward him.  The finding of her
kerchief the next morning, and the terrible
apprehension which the blood-stain had aroused in
him, swept away the anger and sorrow from his
heart, leaving nothing there but an agonizing
fear.  This had been, in turn, banished by the
joy of finding her alive and unharmed, waiting
for him amidst the roses.  The great fear had
softened the anger in his heart; the sudden
happiness exalted his soul from the hell of anguish
in which it had dwelt, into a perfect and pure
peace.  Pride, anger, and resentment were swept
away, and love swayed him with its mastery.
He knew her now, faulty as she was; and his
higher nature forgave her, because of her great
love, because of her great wrong.  But in his
stormy breast the tide of feeling flowed and
ebbed; pride had reigned there so long that
love could not all at once claim undisputed sway.
He could not learn in an instant that pride is
born of hell, while love is breathed from heaven.
In that strange moment when their two beings
had seemed etherealized, he had forgiven her all;
but in the days that followed, pride, doubt, and
prejudice came forward one by one to do combat
with victorious love.  It might be that they would
conquer in the struggle; it might even be that
pride, being selfish, should make him doubt and
finally even forget love, which is unselfish.  But
he had pardoned her, and loved her with all her
sins; he had acknowledged that bond of spirit
which made them one; he had knelt before her
and kissed her feet in a passionless embrace full
of reverence.  No matter what griefs should fall
upon her, no matter what deed or word of his
might put them apart in this world, she should
carry through her life, and beyond it, the
knowledge that what was highest in him had leapt to
meet her love, and acknowledged that they
belonged each to other for eternity.

John Graham awoke one morning to find
himself possessed of a picture.  He had seen it
between waking and sleeping, in the early hours of
the night, and it had haunted his dreams till
sunrise.  He heard the wondrous carolling of
the birds just before dawn, with a joy greater
than was his wont, for it heralded the day which
should bring light for his work.  French John,
coming in with his breakfast, for the first time
in his life entered and left the tower without
word or look of greeting from the artist, who,
with bent brow and serious face, was sketching
in the first lines of his picture with a bit of
white chalk.  The half-finished portrait of
Mrs. Patrick Shallop looked at him with one
reproachful eye from the easel; but Graham paid no
heed to the neglected portrait; he was deeply
engrossed in pursuing his thought and preserving
it in a tangible shape.  It is a rare thing,
in this age of the worship of the golden calf, for
the artist even to be absorbed in the love of his
profession.  Of old, it seems that the sages and
the sculptors wrought and thought for the sake
of art and learning, the spur of ambition being
all that was necessary to urge them forward.
To-day the goal toward which such men strive
is a golden one, and the worship of money is
more in vogue than the pursuit of glory.

When artists sell their souls, brains, and
talents to dealers, engaging to deliver so many
works of art in so many months, on such and
such a class of subjects, bargaining by the
wholesale for the work which they shall produce
during the coming twelve-month, what wonder that
the cry of the connoisseur is, Too much
technique, too little sentiment!  "What is
sentiment?" one would ask such a babbler; is it a
thing to be measured off by the yard, or sold in
canvases to suit traders, who feel the pulse of the
public, and if it is feverish give more stimulant,
or if it is fainting prescribe an anodyne?  To such
prostitution do these men strive to degrade the
arts, but in vain.  Apollo's voice is still stronger
than the chink of doubloons; and there are those
whose ears are ever strained to catch his mystic
music.  The art trade, the literary trade, may
flourish luxuriantly, growing like weeds, with a
rank prodigality; but the flowers of art and
literature, for all that, stand serenely strong in the
garden of our fair young world, growing day by
day in beauty and strength.  Their blossoming
may be rare in this day and generation, but the
plants are sound and full of a mighty sap.

Though John Graham was a man of the world,
there was no taint of worldliness about him;
he knew the world, because he had lived
somewhat in it, but more, perhaps, because he had
studied the lives of the world's people.  The
painting of a picture was to him of more
importance than its sale; the conception of a work
more than its accomplishment.  His enthusiasm
was apt to wane as his picture neared
completion.  The great glow with which the idea
came to him kept him warm and interested
through all the stages of the crystallization of
his thought; but when the work was finished he
ceased to prize it, and either threw himself into
a new composition, or patiently labored at
uninteresting mechanical work until he was again
inspired.  It was with difficulty that he could be
induced to sell his pictures; he would sometimes
keep them before him for years, waiting to alter
some detail or to remedy some defect.  His
friends, knowing his reluctance to part with
them, were wont to wait till they knew the artist
to be in absolute need of funds, and then quietly
to walk away with the coveted picture, forcing
him to accept its price.  A few people only in
California understood or cared for his landscapes,
or the rare works of imagination which he
produced; and it was through his portraits that he
was chiefly known.  He felt in himself an
unfitness for this line of work; and had it not been
for the sake of his beloved mother, partially
dependent on him, it is not likely that he would
ever have followed it.  The reason was not far
to seek why.  Graham did not succeed in that
important branch of art: the individual had little
interest for him; men and women absorbed
him less than nature.  Every tree and brooklet,
dead forest leaf or purpled thunder-cloud, held
for him a lesson.  Men and women seen from
a distance were more likely to interest him than
those with whom he was thrown in close contact.
When their lives and actions were viewed in
an impersonal perspective, he understood them
better, and often theorized about them.  His
thoughts were oftener occupied with people of
whom he knew little than with his friends and
intimates.  To seek truth first and beauty second,
was his creed; but his life was not always guided
by that high rule; and the jack-o'-lantern beauty
sometimes tempted him from the pursuit of truth,
leading him on long rambles over smiling meads
and into flower-hedged swamp lands.  There
would he lie undone, angry and smarting from
the thorns through which beauty had led him;
and then, turning his back upon her, would
trudge earnestly along the road which leads
truthward.  Millicent had once whispered to him that
he mistook two loving sisters for dread rivals,
and that truth and beauty, when truly seen, are
found together; whereat Graham had looked full
into her eyes, long and steadily, and kissing her
hand, with a sigh, had spoken of other things.

Lying beside him on the floor, as he worked
upon his newly imagined picture, was a painting
nearly finished, on which he had been working
the previous day.  A wooden panel, on which
was represented the ever-new subject, fairest of
themes to artist and poet,--two lovers,
standing together in the rosy dawn of love, ere the
scorching sun of passion has deepened their cool
morning into a fervid midday.  The man's figure
was strong and graceful, his attitude one of
protection; the girl's rounded and delicate body
swayed toward her lover, whose arm enfolded
her.  His face was turned away, the eyes looking
far, as if into the future; while her delicate
features were turned toward him, her glance
trustfully fastened on his face.  The color of
the warm woodland background was mellow and
rich, bringing out the deeper tones of the figures.
The resemblance of the girl to Millicent
Almsford could hardly have been unintentional, one
who knew her well would have said; and yet
Graham was only half-conscious that the face
and figure recalled her chief traits.  He had
thought of her as he worked; and beneath his
brush her bronze hair and luminous face had
been shadowed out more distinctly every day.
A rare picture, full of beauty and sentiment;
but thrown aside to-day for the new inspiration
which had seized upon the artist.  The subject
to be treated was the entrance of the Poet to
the abode of the Muses.  He sketched the Poet,
mounted on his winged horse, just crossing the
narrow, defile which led to the sacred spot.
With knit brows and earnest face, Graham
worked at the sketch all day; only leaving his
tower when the daylight failed him.  As he
wandered through the dim forest aisles, he
thought of Millicent for the first time,
remembering that he had agreed to ride with her in
the afternoon at three o'clock; it was now past
six.  Without the slightest feeling of remorse
at his failure to keep the engagement, he
determined to ride over to the house and see her.
Millicent received him rather coolly, having spent
the afternoon crying with worry and disappointment
at his non-appearance; and he, only half
noticing her mood, failed to understand it.  He
was dimly aware that her society was not as
agreeable as usual, and consequently he devoted
himself to Mrs. Deering during the evening.
At first Miss Almsford kept aloof from the
conversation; but later, when her lover began to
talk brilliantly, she drew near to where he sat
and listened to his words with downcast eyes.
Graham was in wonderful vein that night; his
every gesture spoke of a strong under-current
of excitement.  His eyes shone, and his deep
voice had a thrill of enthusiasm which stirred
the pulses of the calm-browed girl, sitting
near by with softly folded hands and parted,
breathless lips.  But it was neither for
Millicent, nor because of Millicent, that the young
man talked so brilliantly.  A more stimulating
influence than hers had touched him, and he
was beyond the reach of her sympathy; exalted
by the wings of his genius to that clear, cool,
lonely communion with the immortals which only
such as he experience.  Dismayed, and yet full
of reverence for this new phase of his nature,
Millicent was filled with a great pain.  She was
left behind; she could follow but not
accompany the flight of his fancy; and a sense of
lonely desolation chilled the hot heart-blood with
a depression the like of which she had never
before known.  The ethereal quality of her being
recognized and did honor to his bold up-winging;
but the personal, selfish side rebelled at the
neglect to which she was subjected.  The
struggle in her breast was at that time unintelligible
to herself; in after days, when the baser nature
had been overcome, she realized it all, and knew
that the long death-struggle of self began that
night when Graham's eyes looked beyond her
for inspiration, up to the blue-starred empyrean
over both their heads.

More from habit than because he needed her
society, her lover asked her to step for a moment
upon the piazza before he left.  As they stood
side by side, he absently took her firm, small
hand in his and kissed the pink fingers one by
one, as if she had been a child.  All at once he
perceived that she was weeping, her slender form
shaken by a storm of sobs.

"Millicent, my child, what is it?  Are you
ill?" he asked, tenderly stroking her hair.

"No, only unhappy.  Graham, why did you
not come for me to-day?  I waited for you all
the afternoon."

"Did I not tell you, dear, that I was very
busy?  I have begun a new picture.  I quite
forgot my engagement with you,--I am very
sorry," he answered, puzzled at her emotion.

"Then it is your picture that is my rival.  I
hate it, I hate it!  I never want to see it!

"Millicent, what do you mean?"

Her only answer was to lay her aching head
upon his breast, to twine her arms about him,
and to sob out incoherent words of love and
grief, all of which puzzled and wearied him.
He soothed her tenderly; and when they parted
there was a smile upon her lips, though her
breast still trembled with the slow after-waves
of a grief which shook her whole being.  Graham,
unnerved by the tempest which he had all
unwittingly aroused, reached his tower in an excited
and irritable frame of mind.  The first thing that
met his eyes was the picture of the lovers lying
at the foot of the easel.  He picked it up, placed
it on the table before him, and long and
critically surveyed his work.

"I painted better than I knew," he sighed.
"Yes, thus it is that we stand toward each other,
man and woman, and ever shall stand,--the
man looking out beyond, above, the woman, and
she finding her utmost limit of self-projection in
him.  Alas and alas!"  He placed the painting
with its face toward the wall, and with a moody
brow turned to his new sketch.

"Bah, I can do nothing, see nothing in that
picture; I have been too rudely summoned back
to earth, to the little griefs of humanity, by a
woman's tears.  I was never meant for it, I
cannot bear it."  So ran his thoughts impatiently.
He had been living in the passionless perfection
of art, and had been suddenly recalled by
a little creature, full of small human feelings,
to this narrow world.  Nettled and unstrung,
he threw himself upon his hard bed, to dream
of Millicent,--a happy dream, in which she
knelt before him, acknowledging her fault,
pleading his forgiveness; a dream of sweet
reconciliation, wherein was memory of that hour
among the redwoods, of that mystic soul-embrace
but once known to him his whole life through.
He awoke refreshed and strengthened, with a
love-song on his lips tender as that of the
mourning dove.  Sundown showed him again at his
easel after a long day's work; but that evening
Millicent listened in vain for the patter of Tasso's
hoofs among the softly rustling autumn leaves.

In the week which followed Graham did not
venture to see Millicent again, fearing her
disturbing influence on his work.  He sent her
every day by his faithful henchman some little
memento.  One morning it was a quick sketch
of the sunset of the previous night.  Another
day it was a bunch of pretty brown quails, the
result of an hour's shooting.  Once she found
hung upon her window-ledge a garland of dewy
red roses; and easily guessed what strong, light
figure had swung itself up the piazza post, and
over the trellis-work, to lay this offering before
her curtained window.

Henry Deering, passing by the piazza on the
night the lovers had parted, heard the sound of
weeping.  In the days that followed, he noticed
Millicent's reddened eyes and restless mood.
He felt sure that some misunderstanding had
arisen between them; and as the days passed,
and Graham failed to appear, he began to
believe that the breach was a serious one.  In the
old days he had loved Graham as a brother; but
in the last months his affection had grown cold,
and held a weak place in his heart, from whence
jealousy was fast banishing it.  Now that he
believed his old friend to have grieved the
woman they both loved, a feeling of antipathy
and an undefined distrust possessed him.

After the long day's work it was his custom
to sit for an hour or so upon the piazza beneath
Millicent's window, watching the beam of light
which shone through her closed blinds until it
was extinguished.  One night, as he sat alone,
the drowsy humming of the insects soothed him
into a light sleep.  When he awoke with a start,
the moon, which had not before been visible,
was high in the heavens.  As he was about to
go in-doors he heard a footstep on the path
outside the house.  He remained motionless in his
chair, resolved to see who was abroad so late.
The footsteps were uncertain and stealthy.
The person first approached the house, and
then retreated to the turf, where the steps
were hardly audible.  Deering stepped lightly
to the edge of the piazza and peered through the
honeysuckle screen.  At a distance of twenty
feet from him stood a man looking up at the
house, at Millicent's window.  His face was
hidden by a muffler and a broad hat pulled low
over the brows.  Deering drew his revolver and
cocked it.  The click of the lock evidently
reached the intruder's ears, for he turned and
fled toward the orchard.  Deering sprang from
the piazza, and shouting, "Who are you?
Stop, or I 'll fire!" ran down the path.  The
fugitive neither answered nor slackened his
pace.  Deering fired, aiming low down; but the
ball whistled by the man and buried itself in the
heart of a peach-tree.  In the close shrubbery
which surrounded the orchard Deering missed his
man; and three minutes later he heard the swift
tramp of a pair of horses on the path which led to
the high-road.  He ran to the stable.  Nothing
there but the mules and old Sphinx; his own
fleet mare and Millicent's thorough-bred were
grazing in the pasture.  He slipped a bridle
over the old mustang's head, and sprang on his
back without waiting for a saddle.  By the time
he reached the highway the riders were out of
sight, and the echo of the distant hoof-beats
reached his ears.  Pursuit was useless; they
were well mounted; and Sphinx had gone dead
lame the day before.  The young man listened
to the faint sound of the hoofs until it died in
the silent night.  Then he dismounted and
examined the road.  There were the traces of two
horses.  As he looked closely at the impressions
left on the thick dust, he saw that only one of
the horses had carried a rider; the other had
been led.

When he returned to the house he found the
family aroused.  Barbara met him on the piazza,
asking anxiously what had happened.  The
report of the revolver had awakened her.

"It was a bear, Barbara," said her brother.
"It is a shame to have roused you all, and for
nothing, too.  I thought I had a sure shot, and
that we should have bear-steak for dinner to-morrow."

"A bear, Hal?  How strange!  Why, this is
the first time one ever came so near the house,
is n't it?"

"No; Ralph killed two long ago, before you
can remember.  Go to bed now, and get the
house quiet, for heaven's sake!"

The young man kept his own counsel, and the
next morning made a careful examination of
the grounds near the house.  On the farther
side of the orchard there were traces of a pair
of horses having been tethered.

Two more days went by, and still Graham
did not come.  Millicent was distressed and
puzzled at his long absence; and finally, after
thoughtful deliberation, she decided to write to
him, telling him how grieved she was at her
own unreasonable behavior.

Graham found a letter early one morning
folded in an embroidered kerchief, and laid
before the door of his tower.  That heavy
unpainted barrier could have told a tale like that
of Tennyson's talking oak, had it been given the
power of speech.  Trembling lips had pressed
timid kisses upon its weather-beaten panels.
Strange old door of the tower, roughly
fashioned by the Mission priests a century ago, what
secrets have you not shut in; what hopes have
you not seen pass out between your time-rusted
lintels!

It was the first letter Millicent had ever
written him; he had but once before seen her
handwriting.  The girlish, weak hand which
had traced the words in the little journal was
greatly altered.  It was now a graceful, flowing
chirography, full of that individuality which
stamped everything appertaining to her.
Graham studied the superscription carefully
before he broke the golden seal, with its device
of Psyche with new-found wings.  It ran as
follows:--

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: small

   BELOVED,--Forgive me! forgive me if you will, for
   I cannot forgive myself.  I was wrong to grudge you
   the time passed with your work.  It was weak and
   selfish of me; but now that I know my fault, be not
   afraid.  Believe that I am strong enough to overcome
   it.  For the red roses at my window I thank you;
   and for the fair picture and the graceful couplet, for
   all the tender thoughts which prompted you to send
   me these tokens, bless you a hundred times.  But
   oh! my lover, come to me; and let me read in your
   strange eyes, that are now bright and cold as ocean
   deeps, and again burning with Promethean fire, that
   I am forgiven.  Not rose nor picture, not poem nor
   sweet garland, can tell me as can they that you
   love me.

.. class:: small noindent

   MILLICENT.

.. vspace:: 2

Graham read the letter through twice, and
folded it away, with a sigh.  "Do I love her?
Does she love me?" he queried; and all that day
the doubt tormented him.  While he worked,
while he took his afternoon ramble through the
woods, while he sat at his solitary supper, it
rankled in his mind.  He could not solve it;
could she?  It were best at least to ask her.
It was only right that she should know of his
doubts of her and of himself.  He found her
flushed with pleasure at the sight of him.  She
had anticipated his coming, and was dressed in
soft colors which he approved, and fair with
a hundred little efforts of coquetry to please
him.  Her bronze hair seemed to the man but
a mesh to snare him.  He turned his eyes
impatiently from the pretty, bare arms, and the
cool, snowy shoulders shining through
transparent draperies.  His judgment should not be
turned aside by her loveliness.  He greeted her
coolly, barely touching her outstretched hand;
and then stood looking gloomily into the
distance, not knowing what to say, uncertain of
the truth, doubting her.  The woman, quick to
see his trouble, spoke to him tenderly, with a
low, soothing voice, thanking him for coming
to her, telling him how long the time had
seemed since they had met.

"And tell me all about your new picture."

"I cannot, Millicent; your letter spoiled my
day's work.  I have done nothing since I read it."

"Dear, what can you mean?"

"This, Millicent,--that my work must always
be first to me.  I had thought that you would
help me in it, but it is not so."  After a pause,
"Millicent, I think we have made a mistake, you
and I.  We cannot help each other, and
therefore we hinder one another.  You dazzle me
with your beauty, and send me back to my work
unfitted for it; while I only make you unhappy,
and fear I can never do anything else."

"Graham, you kill me."  She looked indeed
as if a blow had been planted in her breast, as
she reeled, all white and trembling, to a seat.
Her words seemed to deepen the nervous
agitation which possessed him, for he said
impatiently,--

"What can I do?  It is not my fault that
you have neither the best love to give me, nor
the power to arouse it in me.  I tell you, child,
that we have been mistaken, and that it is time
for this thing to end."

"No, no, Graham; you are angry, you know
not what you say.  In mercy speak no more."  She
had sunk upon her knees, her clasped
hands stretched toward him in an agony of fear.

"Do not kneel to me, but listen; for I am
right.  If things had been different, it might
have been; but as they are, we have been mad
to think of it.  There is no help for it, my girl;
we must kiss and part.  You never loved me
as you should, Millicent, because you could
not.  A woman can love but once, and that is
the first time."

"It is not true.  You, who are a man, say it.
What woman ever said it?  It is a lie, a lie!
You shall not say it, you must not think it.
You would make us creatures without souls
indeed.  Are they right, then, the Easterns?
If when we women are sold, or stolen, or
entrapped, we must love, and only then, you deny
us other life than that of the earth.  Of what
man would you hold this doctrine to be true?
It is utterly false! it is wicked! it is unworthy
of you!"  She moaned where she had fallen on
the ground, and tried to speak again; but the
man continued with a pitiless stream of words,
sincere, earnest, spoken for her good as well as
his own.

"We have been loitering together for a time,
child, on life's way, and have chased the golden
butterfly of pleasure which men oft mistake for
love.  Before we are too deeply entangled in the
briers, we must turn from the chase, we must
forget each other.  We can be of no good, one
to the other; and I will be no more harm to
you than I have been."

He could not see her face now; it was hidden
on her arm as she crouched where his words
had thrown her.  The pathos of the attitude
touched him; he gently lifted one of the tightly
clinched hands, and loosened the fingers which
so fiercely bit the delicate palm.  He was in a
strange mood, when heart and soul seemed
absent from him, and only the clear, strong brain
prompted his words.  Her passionate grief
hardened rather than softened the look in his eyes.
This girl, who had been as wax in his fingers,--glad
when he smiled, weeping when he sighed,
swayed invariably by the mood which possessed
him,--now denied by piteous word and gesture
the words which he was speaking.  Her hand,
unlocked by him, would have clasped his stronger
palm; but at the caress he dropped her arm and
turned his eyes from her.

"I cannot give you up," she murmured; "you
must not leave me so.  Oh, my love, you wrong
me, you wrong yourself!  I love you, Graham,
with all my soul; I love you as I never thought
to love before!  Cruel--cruel!  It is not with
lips and eyes that I have loved you, for you
could lose that, and yet miss nothing from your
life.  Turn not from me, if you would not leave
that which is best worth having by the roadside,
and press on to find that goal towards which
your ambition spurs you, empty and void without
me at your side!  It is your worse nature which
doubts mine.  Graham, Graham! what matters
it if hand and eyes have been another's?  My
soul is only yours, wakened first when your
strong spirit called it from the sleep begun
before it was vested in this body, ere it was
divided from your own."

The last words, faintly whispered, hardly
reached his ears.  To-day their import could
not have been felt by him.  In other times he
understood, and sufferingly admitted the truth
of those incoherent words, which died on the air
as soon as they were breathed, and yet whose
memory abode with him his life through.  He
had come to Millicent not knowing what he
should say, and the words seemed to have spoken
themselves.  He was sorry, as is the surgeon for
the pain which he inflicts; but, like the physician,
he felt that mercy lay in mercilessness.  As
she lay weeping at his feet, a strong tide of
emotion swept over him, leaving him pale and
trembling.  He lifted her with eager hands, and on
shoulder, brow, and pallid mouth he pressed
cruel, parting kisses, which carried no balm to
her broken heart, and brought no ease to his
fevered spirit.  Then he broke from her with a
mighty effort, passion and pride wasting him
with a terrible warring, and fleeing through the
night left her there cold and nerveless, like a
broken lily amidst the dews and damps.

In the days which followed, Barbara watched
with tender solicitude Millicent's changed face
and nerveless step.  Only through her
sympathetic perceptions did she know of the girl's
trouble; of what nature it was she surmised, not
incorrectly.  Lovers' quarrels are usually looked
upon with a tolerant amusement by intimate
friends and relatives; and when they are of short
duration, it is usually considered advisable to
ignore them altogether.  But as weeks passed, and
Barbara learned that Graham was in San Francisco,
she redoubled her little attentions, and
shielded Millicent as best she could from her
mother's anxious questions.

Angry and rebellious was Millicent in these
days, with that terrible under-feeling of anguish
which must outlive anger and rebellion; that
fainting of the soul, when all that has supported
it seems to have sunk away, and it is left
absolutely without power to resist an all-devouring
despair.  Her happiness had been so short-lived;
her misery was so terrible, so unending!  Her
young life, which had been balked of its natural
joyousness and youth, had suddenly been
illumined with the pure and perfect light of the
love which passeth all understanding, and now
she was in darkness blacker than she had ever
known.  The anguish of that great love was not
wanting, and she suffered with a new sense of
her capacity for pain.  In her dumb grief she
knew that the agony was not undeserved; this
was the bitterest drop in the cup of tears.  She
had not told him her sad secret; she had
deceived him!  She had meant to tell him of
the blot upon her name, before their lives had
become irrevocably joined; but she had put off
the dreaded moment until it was too late: he
knew all now, and not by her confession.  Would
she ever have had the courage to tell him?  She
almost doubted herself.  Was she deceitful by
nature? she asked herself a hundred times,
questioning her deep eyes in the mirror's depth.  No,
she knew that her frank, sincere character had
been warped and distorted by the evil influence
of the man whose name she would have cursed,
had not the grave closed over him, burying his
sins and her reproaches in the cold earth.  Poor
child, poor women all, the weaker creatures in
this remorseless world!  When they are bruised
and broken by the force of their masters, is
it strange, is it unpardonable, that the weapon
of the weak tempts them?  Who forged that
weapon for them, who forced them to use it?  If
there were no unjust oppression among men, no
brutal abuse of a superior force, would women
be driven to deceit, that refuge of the weak?

In this sophistry she wrapped herself, but was
not satisfied.  She had been tried and found
wanting.  This it was that had lost to her the
lover for whom she had faced death.  He might
not know it; he had never said it; but she
recognized what had driven him from her side,--the
fault was hers.  Was it unpardonable?  Could he
never forgive her?  Must their lives be
separated, now that spirit had kissed soul?  Must
the long waiting last until time should be ended
for them both, and Eternity begun?

Of all cruel gifts, is not that which lingered in
Pandora's box the one through which men suffer
most fiercely?  O Hope! if thou hadst escaped
along with the rest of the heathen god's
blessings, how many tortured souls would now be at
rest in a fixed and accepted grief which struggles
not, neither rebels at the decrees of destiny!
Unquenchable art thou, robbing sad mortals of
all repose; even in death shall they not find
rest; thou troublest the dying with thy visions
of a future!  With resolute hands sorrowing
women seize upon thee, and would stifle thee
in their breasts; but though thou dost
sometimes simulate death, when the watchful hands
loosen their hold thou springest up stronger and
more cruel than before, and tormentest the
sufferer with thy struggles!

"If it would only die--if it would only die!"
moaned Millicent, as she paced her room, her
hands crossed heavily upon her breast, as if to
stifle some tangible spark with their weight.  A
thousand times she submitted to the rest of a
despair which was all too quickly routed by the
fever of a hope which could not die.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVI.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |    "If we should part and pass to separate ways
   |  With stifled sigh, averted head,
   |    Within a land where centuries are as days
   |  Our love shall live though flesh and wrong lie dead."

.. vspace:: 2

And her lover, where was he?  In the heart of
the city, working in a garret on his great
picture, for the sake of which he had forsaken the
woman he loved.  Intolerant of opposition was
Graham; and when once an idea had been
accepted by him, it was next to an impossibility
for him to give it up.  He had become
convinced that his love for Millicent would make
him faithless to his work; that the love of
woman was not compatible with the highest
devotion to art.  Her fond dependence on him would
drain his strength.  Without his work he could
neither be satisfied nor satisfy her.  The closer
she clung to him the more did he recoil from
her.  In the strength of his genius, he laughed
at the idea that a loving companionship was
necessary to him; and yet hours came, at the
end of a long day's work, in the quiet watches
of the night when the city slept about him, in
which all his theories were overset, in a terrible
longing for the girl whose sad eyes haunted him.
To see her and to touch her; to hear her low,
deep voice; to forget all the grievous striving
of his life, in the restful warmth of hers!  He
thought of her always as he had first seen her,
lying before the fire, her slender figure robed in
white, her head supported in the hands which
he had so often caressed.  Waiting for him, she
seemed to have been then.  Waiting for him,
he loved to fancy her always.  These tender
thoughts drifted through his mind in the soft
twilight, or before the dawn.  In the fervid
daylight he only remembered her as she had been
on that last evening, rebellious and close-clinging,
desperate, beautiful, and full of unrest.

The city tired him with its everlasting sounds
of traffic.  The tread of dray horses and the
rumbling of carts sounded in his ears from
earliest dawn till late night.  There was no peace
here amongst his fellow-men.  He longed for
the solitude of his tower, for his forest
neighbors, for the sound of the woods, the wide arch
of blue sky, seen now through one narrow slit
between the opposing houses.

One morning he determined to take a day of
rest; and, after making a light breakfast at a
coffee-house near by, he started for the San
Rosario Ranch, with a lighter heart than he had
carried in his bosom for many days.  It was a
bright morning; the air was crisped with a
prediction of winter weather, genial enough in this
region at its worst.  As he passed through the
familiar country he traced some likeness to
Millicent Almsford in every object on which his
eyes lighted.  Now it was the golden-brown of
her hair seen in the shiny coat of a sleek filly
frolicking in a pasture; now it was her graceful
movements traced in the trembling branches of
a straight young sapling; again, her gray eyes
smiled in his face from under the brows of a fair
child playing by the roadside.  The harsh voice
of the wheels thundering over the steel rails
seemed to be repeating her name; and his heart
kept time with the refrain, beating out the
syllables rhythmically,--Millicent, Millicent,
Millicent!  He was weary of reasoning with himself.
For six days in the week his work was all-sufficing,
and he needed no other companionship;
but on the seventh day he longed for rest; he
needed beauty, he needed love.  He knew that
it was weak in him to waver in his resolution
not to see Millicent again; he knew that it was
a wrong to her, and that he would bitterly
regret it in after days.  And yet he yielded to
that exquisite golden haze which seemed to have
dropped about him, flooding his life with a
passionate delight, an ecstasy of expectation.

He alighted at the station, and stood watching
the receding train with strained eyes.  He
wished now that he had not come.  He walked
up and down the narrow platform, flushed and
unnerved with the tumult in his breast.  On
his right lay the dusty carriage-road which led
to the house; on his left a narrow bridle-path
pierced the woods, over which he must pass to
reach his tower.  Which should it be,--a day
passed with the creatures of the forest, under
the blue sky and murmuring trees; or an hour
of the soft delight which Millicent's voice,
Millicent's eyes, Millicent's lightest finger-touch,
wrapped about him?  He realized now how he
had cheated himself.  He had said that it was
the wood-birds whose voices wooed him from the
city!  He knew now that beneath that longing
for the free air of his forest home lay the deeper
desire which had tempted him to leave his
picture half finished, his palette half set.

Which road should he take?  Not more
unstable was the blue ring of smoke which the
breeze carried from his lips, tossing it hither and
thither in a cloudy wreath upon the white air,
than was this man between the opposing
influences which divided his nature.  At last he
tossed his cigarette upon the platform, carefully
quenching its spark with his foot, and with a
light, fleet step ran down the wide carriage-road
which led to the house--which would bring him
to Millicent.  He had known all along, with that
inner consciousness which decides with lightning
rapidity a question which the intellect debates
long and seriously, that his feet would follow
that pleasant, open road rather than the dark
wood-trail; and yet the train had sped twenty
miles further on its journey before he turned
his face toward the happy valley.  So clumsy is
reason compared to instinct; so tedious are the
modes of thought to the working of the feelings;
so useless is the grave gate of wisdom to
check the tumultuous torrent of feeling.

He found the wide piazza deserted, the front
door fast closed, the blinds of the library and
dining-room tightly drawn.  The hospitable
house was silent and deserted.  His
imperative summons was finally answered by a
domestic, the successor of poor Ah Lam, who in his
ridiculous vernacular informed the visitor that
"Alley folk go waly."  Which, being translated
into English, signified that no one was at home.

Graham felt as if a flood of cold water had
been dashed into his face.  He shivered, as he
turned from the door and descended the steps;
and yet before he had walked two miles in
the familiar road which led to his tower, he
gave a profound sigh of relief.  It was better
so!  The exercise had cooled his fevered blood;
the crisp forest air had brought reason back
to his passion-tossed breast.  It was better
that he had not seen her.  Something of
the fatalist was there about this strong-brained
rationalist.  He half fancied that it was not
chance alone which had decreed that Millicent
should be absent from the Ranch that day.
But he sang no more as he had done on his
way to the house; and his serious face lost
that smile of hope which had lighted the eyes
and touched the mouth into an unaccustomed
softness.  If he was silent, the wild birds
were melodious, and he walked between choirs
of invisible songsters; while the whirring of
a partridge, the fleet step of a wild fox in the
thicket, gave him the assurance that he was
not alone in the mysterious wood.  At last the
distance was accomplished; and at high noon,
when the shadows had all shrunk back into
the tall trees before the ardent heat of the
sun, he reached the ruin of the old church.
He leaned against the fragment of a pillar
which stood at the foot of the staircase, and
looked up at the square gray tower with its
close-clinging pall of moss and yellow lichens.
From a rift in the wall burst a blaze of
color,--a clump of wallflowers stretching its flame
of blossoms upward toward his window.  He
noticed that the casement was open; and as he
looked he saw the fluttering of a bit of drapery
over the edge of the sill.  It must have been
the curtain, of course; but the sight of it gave
him a strange sensation, not unlike one that he
had experienced before on that spot, when he
had been tricked by the moonlight into fancying
that there was a woman straying in the aisles
of the old church.  He remembered that night
and what it had revealed to him; and at the
black thought the sky seemed to have darkened
over his head.  He had stood dreaming at the
tower foot for fifteen minutes, and in that time
the sky had become overcast, a cold wind had
sprung up and now blew into his face, carrying
a host of big drops with it.  The rain had come
at last!  After the long spring and summer
unmarred by clouded skies or rude gusts, the first
rain had come.  With a rough tenderness it
dashed itself against the parched land and shook
the tall trees till they murmured a delighted
welcome.  The dusty ferns growing low down
about the knees of the great trees caught the
happy news, and uncurled their tender fernlings
that they might feel the welcome touch of the
rain-drops, as they filtered through the greedy
leaves and raced down the straight stems to
reach the myriads of thirsty mouths yearning
for their balm.  The rain had come; and the
languid stream, which had pined and shrunk to
a pitiful thread of water, leaped joyously down
its rocky bed.  It would grow strong and young
and beautiful again; its banks would bloom
with flowers; its course would no longer run
painfully over heated stones, between seared
brown edges,--the rain had come!

On the narrow stairway Graham paused, near
the top.  Something shining lay on the step
before him.  The object proved to be a small
silver arrow, tipped with a feather of brilliants.
He picked up the jewelled toy, which he had
once before held in his hand,--one evening
when he had withdrawn it from the soft tresses
which it caught together behind a small white
ear.  His hand trembled as he remembered the
soft rushing of silken curls over his arm, the
fragrance which had floated about him, the look
of loving reproach which had punished his
audacity.  Wondering how the arrow had found
its way to the threshold of his tower, Graham
tried to open the heavy door with his key.  To
his surprise it refused to yield; the bolt was
drawn on the inside.  Some one was in his
tower.  Thinking that the Frenchman, in whose
care his room had been left, might be at work,
he lifted the heavy brass dolphin which served
for a knocker, and rapped loudly.  There was
no answer.  The rain by this time was falling in
torrents.  He was entirely without shelter; and
he knocked a second time, calling out to know
who was inside the room.  He heard a light step
approach the door, and a hand was laid upon
the lock.  The old wood-cutter could never have
walked with that musical footstep; the soft rustle
of garments could not have been made by him.
Graham's heart leaped from its quiet beating
into a very tumult of pulsations, as the bolt was
gradually drawn and the heavy door swung
slowly open.  On the threshold of his lonely
tower stood Millicent, with downcast eyes and
pale face.  For a moment he was silent, looking
at her, doubting his own vision; fearing to move
lest she should vanish from before his eager eyes
as she did in his dreams.  Could this beautiful,
colorless creature, with marble cheeks and fallen
lids, with sombre garments and nerveless, pallid
hands crossed upon the breast, be Millicent
Almsford?  He stepped nearer with outstretched
hands to touch her, to feel that it was in verity
the woman who had lain weeping at his feet
that night among the roses.  He would have
folded her to his breast, but the white lids flashed
open, the sad, tear-worn eyes looked into his
own with an expression which made him draw
back; and the girl, without a word, passed out
of the doorway and stood unprotected in the
driving storm.

Before her mute grief, his passionate longing
was turned to a great and holy pity.  He stood
beside her and said gently,--

"Millicent, you will not leave me without a
word?  You must not go out into the storm;
I will leave you here alone, if you wish, until the
rain is over.  Do not be so cruel as to doubt
me, dear one."

He stopped, for his words had made her
tremble.  She feared him no longer, and with a
little sigh laid her hand in his and suffered him
to lead her into the room.  The artist placed
his visitor in a great chair, and busied himself
in making a fire on his cold hearth.

"Now this is more cheerful, fair lady, is it not?"
he cried, in a pleasant voice.  "And pray tell me
what brought you to my lonely dwelling."

"I had always wanted to see your tower,
Graham; and this morning they all went to San
Francisco for the day, and I thought I would
ride over and look at it from the outside.  I
found old John airing the room, and accepted
his invitation to rest here for half an hour
before riding home.  He came up just now to tell
me that it was going to rain, but as he thought it
would be only a shower he had put my horse
under shelter.  This is how I came here; and
now tell me what brought you so unexpectedly
from town."

"I cannot tell, white one.  Your will, perhaps."

"Nay, friend, that has never swayed thee one
hair's-breadth from thine appointed course."

He shook his head sadly, and looked out of
the window.  She did not know--it was better
for her perhaps that she never should
know--how great an influence she had wielded over
his life.  She did not know that for her, faith
and youth had bloomed in his heart when he
had thought them dead.  Her untruth was
killing them, and their death-agony had shaken
and worn him cruelly.  She thought him hard
and relentless.  It might be easier for her to
dull the pain in her heart, with this consciousness
of injury received.  He would never tell
her of the irreparable wrong she had done him.
If he was not forgiving he was magnanimous.
No word of reproach should pass his lips.

Outside the rain was pouring down, but less
steadily; the patter of the drops sounded more
and more lightly on the window-panes.  The
shower would not long continue.  Graham took
note of the clearing sky, and sighed heavily.
With all her faults he loved her; the tower
would be lonelier than ever when she had flitted
from it like a sprite of the rain-storm.  The
great trees outside lifted up their branches
with a mighty wailing, echoing his sigh; and
Millicent, as if conscious that love was pleading
against pride in that strong heart which had
never learned the lesson of forgiveness, turned
her white, appealing face towards him.  The
man's being had been swept that day with fiery
impulses from the first moment of consciousness.
Passionate love, pity, scorn, and anger
had in turn written their impress on his mobile
face.  He came close to her side, and taking
both her hands in his, knelt at her side:

"O Millicent, Millicent! could he not have
spared you?  We could have loved each other
so truly!  Poor child, poor child!  What fiend
was he to have betrayed you!  But now it can
never be, never, never, never!"  The words rang
out drearily, the death-knell of all that had made
life beautiful to them both.  The pale girl sat
motionless, speechless, her eyes dark with
horror, her hands nerveless in his passionate grasp.
Tears fell upon those white fingers which he had
so often kissed,--cruel tears wrung from the
bruised heart of the man she loved; tears that
she had no power to check, tears that had their
source in her own sin.  In that hour of agony,
if remorse may in aught atone for error,
Millicent must have been forgiven of the angels.
The proud man knew how to suffer, but he
could not forgive.  He arose and dashed the
tears from his eyes; they had cost him mortal pain.

The rain was over, the gray sky had cleared;
and Millicent, like a gray shadow, slipped from
the tower, leaving her lover alone, with the
mocking sunlight shining on his dark,
tear-stained face.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Our bread was such as captives' tears
   |  Have moistened many a thousand years,
   |  Since man first pent his brother men
   |  Like brutes within an iron den."

.. vspace:: 2

It was a long chase that brought Hal Deering
and Maurice Galbraith face to face with the
ruffian, whom Hal readily identified.  They found
him with a group of new-found friends in the
chief liquor saloon of a small, rather
disreputable town, fifty miles from the Ranch.  When
the two young men entered the place, the man
they were looking for asked them to join in the
"all-round drink" he was about to "stand treat
for," which invitation was promptly declined by
Hal Deering.  After a whispered word, Galbraith
had left the shop; and Hal, seating himself at a
table, awaited the return of his friend, quietly
enduring the insulting remarks which the
offended Horton heaped upon him.  The loafers
in the shop had a kindly feeling toward the
man who had treated them, and did not
discourage him in his attempts to force the
new-comer into a quarrel.  But Hal was imperturbable,
and answered neither with look nor word.
Stimulated by the whiskey he had imbibed, and
the admiring attention of his friends, the rowdy
finally called out in a brutal voice,--

"If you think yerself too good to drink with
this yere crowd, p'raps yer would n't mind
amusing 'em by showing 'em the last style of dancing
down in 'Frisco.  'T would raley please us to see
you step out."

As he spoke he drew his pistol from his belt
and pointed it at Deering.  The more sober
ones of the party here interfered; and the burly
saloon-keeper stepped forward with the remark,
that he "did n't mean to 'low anything but fair
play in his shanty; and that if the genl'm'n had
a difference between them they must settle it
outside."

The man whom Deering was after seated
himself astride a hogshead of beer and cocked his
pistol, advising the "boss" to keep out of the
affair if he valued his "sweet life."

"Now, then, young man, if yer don't cut a
caper before I count three, I shall be obliged to
see how much of your right boot-heel I can
carry away with this bullet, without endangering
them handsome feet o' yourn."

Hal, only afraid of losing his man, answered
coolly,--

"You can shoot if you want to.  I am a
stranger in this place, and I prefer to do my
dancing at home."

The proprietor again interposed, and laying
his hand on the bully's shoulder, ordered him to
put up his shooting-irons.  Horton threw him off,
and things were beginning to look rather
serious; when Deering saw Galbraith crossing the
street with two men, one of whom he recognized
as the county sheriff.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have come a long
distance to find this man; I am anxious to have
his company as far as the San Bernardino prison,
where he will find comfortable board provided
for him.  If you are law-abiding citizens, you
will not interfere with the arrest of Daniel
Horton on an indictment of murder."

As he finished speaking, the three men
entered, and the sheriff laid his hand on Horton's
shoulder.  Murder is an ugly word, and a silence
followed Hal's speech.  The crowd instinctively
drew back from the man who had been charged
with the foul crime; and a silence ensued, which
was broken by the sheriff, a high-voiced little
man, who said in a loud tone,--

"I arrest you, Dan Horton, for the murder of
Ah Lam, committed at Carey's Bridge, on the
afternoon of Wednesday last."

A revulsion of feeling was manifest in the
faces of the crowd.  The horror for a person
who has committed the unatonable crime of
murder had been felt; but when it transpired
that the victim was a Chinaman, the case
appeared to be very much altered.  The man, quick
to see the favorable change in public sentiment,
cried,--

"Wall, boys, you see I am 'spected of having
done the business for one of these Chinese
vermin.  What sort of a town 's this as will see a
man 'rested for that?"

Daniel Horton's experience of life in the
rough mining towns, where the last five years of
his life had been spent, gave him the hope that
the men in the saloon would help him to escape
from arrest.  But though sympathy for him was
evinced by the group of idlers, there was no
attempt at resisting the officers; and the sheriff,
assisted by Galbraith and Deering, finally
succeeded in placing the hand-cuffs on his wrists.
When he saw that there was no help for him, he
submitted to be led from the saloon, giving one
parting look of scorn at the friends whom he
had won by a glass of liquor and lost on the
appearance of an officer.

"Of all the derned mean skunks as I ever
met, this town numbers the most," he muttered,
as the screen door swung to behind him.

The examination of the prisoner was to be
held in the court-room of the county prison of
San Bernardino.  Millicent was summoned to be
present.  Escorted by Deering and Galbraith,
she arrived before the entrance of the gloomy
building, one bright October morning.  It was
a day when life seemed a pleasant thing, if only
because there were sunlight and color in the
odorous woods and pleasant highways.  Just as
they reached the doorway, a line of people filed
out from the narrow portal.  They were the
discharged prisoners, some of whom had been
in confinement for twenty-four hours only, while
others had not breathed the free air for many
weary months.  A girl not older than Millicent
passed them with a slow, inelastic step and
downcast eyes.  Her slender figure was poorly
but decently clad in a gown of rusty black, her
hair neatly arranged, her hands and face clean
and of a remarkable pallor.  She alone among
the little group seemed loath to leave the prison,
where at least she had been among those who
could not look down on her.  At the threshold
she paused and shuddered, as if the wide street,
with its row of young shade-trees and neat
sidewalk, were more forbidding than the narrow
prison-yard, with its spiked rails and dismal
barred windows.  Those who were behind
became impatient at her delay; and she was
pushed not ungently into the street by the man
next to her in the sad procession.  As she
found herself alone outside the dreary stone
building, she gave a low groan, clasping her
poor thin hands together over her breast.
Millicent, moved by the pathetic gesture, spoke to
her gently, asking if she could in any way help
her; but the girl shook her head as if annoyed
by the question, and walked quickly down the
street, taking the first turn which led her out of
sight of the prison.  All those who followed were
men, most of whom wore a conscious expression,
as if they were more embarrassed at being
seen leaving the prison than mortified at
having merited the punishment which they had
undergone.  As the last of the queue filed out,
Galbraith entered the doorway, Millicent
following him, and Deering bringing up the rear.  In
the wide stone hall which they entered were
groups of men talking together or leaning idly
against the rails.  A heavy grated door swung
open with a rusty, grinding sound, and two men
appeared, arm-in-arm.  The taller of the two
was a handsome young fellow, with blond,
curling hair, blue eyes, and fresh rosy cheeks.  His
expression was almost infantine in its beauty;
and this, with his jaunty air, contrasted strangely
with his companion's ugly, stooping figure and
downcast, shamed face.  The latter was a
misshapen creature, with a humped back and a large,
ugly head furnished with coarse hair and beard.
As the grate clanged behind the couple,
the handsome young fellow laughed cheerily,
stretched his limbs, and drew a long breath of
relief.

"Ta-ta, bully, hope I won't see you soon
again," he said, nodding impudently to the
door-keeper.  The smaller man was lame, as well as
deformed; and the under-warden, who had joined
Galbraith, asked him kindly how his leg was doing.

"Better, sir, thank you," croaked the unfortunate
in a harsh voice; "it came hard on me not
havin' George here to help me; but it's all right
now.  Good-morning to you, sir."

"Tell me about those men," said Millicent to
an official whom Galbraith had introduced to her.

"They are brothers, George and Pete Marcy.
Which of them do you think paid a twenty-dollar
fine to get his brother out of prison
just now?  Likely you 'll think it was the
good-looking chap; but 't was Pete the dwarf.  He 's
the tinker and general useful man of the town,
is Pete; and George is one of the biggest
rascals in the State of California.  But he covers his
tracks well; and though we know a good many
things about him, we can prove nothing more
against him than an occasional assault and
battery."

"And did the poor little creature pay the fine
out of his earnings?"

"Bless you, yes; and pays for his clothes,--nice
ones, you remarked, mebbe?  Pete gives
that rascal every dollar he earns; and the only
thing George does toward supporting himself,
is to rob an occasional hen-roost when he wants
to give a supper party."

The outer door now closed with a grave
sound; it had let out its day's quota of men and
women who had legally expiated their crimes;
it had taken in its one breath of sun and air.
From a narrow window Millicent saw the Marcy
brothers walking down the street, George with
head erect and swaggering gait, Pete shambling
awkwardly along at his side, vainly trying to
keep pace with his handsome brother's long
strides.

The warden now led the way to the court-room.
The keeper of the gate, a stern-looking
man, with iron-gray hair and iron-rusted clothes,
stopped Millicent as she was about to pass
through the grated door, saying,--

"Put up your veil, please."  Three inches of
transparent red tulle masked her face from the
brow to the mouth.  So slight a covering was
it that the superior officer had not noticed it;
but nothing escaped the lynx-eyed jailer, who
added curtly, "Must keep it up all through
the prison.  No woman is allowed to enter or
leave this place veiled."

Millicent looked a little puzzled as she
unfastened the bit of lace; and the grim guardian
added, in a voice which was something softer
than the grating of his key in the lock,--

"You need n't be ashamed to put up your
veil, with *such* a face as yours."

Millicent smiled an acknowledgment of the
compliment, and passed through the gate,
holding fast to the slip of yellow paper and the red
ticket which had been given to her, and which
were necessary to secure an exit from that
precinct which is so easily entered and so difficult
to leave.

"You have captivated that grim old fellow
with one glance, Miss Almsford.  How do you
do it?" queried Galbraith.

"What do you mean?  I don't," answered
Millicent rather inconsistently.

They had by this time reached the prison-yard;
and Millicent, with a shiver, looked up
at the high, smooth stone walls, with their cruel
topping of iron spikes.  In a certain angle she
stopped a moment, attracted by a little fern
which had found place for its slender roots in a
cranny of the masonry.  She suddenly started,
and with a horrified expression ran back a few
paces, grown pale to the lips.  The warden,
who had looked at her with an odd expression,
said,--

"You were standing, just now, miss, on the
spot where the gallows is always erected."

"I knew it," said the girl, in a shaking voice.
"I saw it."

Maurice Galbraith quietly drew her arm under
his own, and said gently, but authoritatively,--

"Come, my child, do not be nervous; you
have a great deal to go through with to-day."

He fixed his deep, serious eyes on her face
for a moment; and the girl, sensitive to his quiet
influence, quickly recovered herself.

They passed up a narrow, dark stone stair-case,
and along a corridor running outside the
cells.  Most of the heavy wooden doors were
open, the outer grating of iron revealing the
interior of the cells.  In one of these a young
mulatto, the Figaro of the village, stood leaning
against the bars talking to a respectable-looking
man of his own color, who proved to be the
pastor of a Methodist church.  The young man
was a handsome fellow, carefully and neatly
dressed.  He seemed somewhat excited, and
talked in a loud voice, which he lowered at the
approach of the party.  Galbraith inquired
what crime he had been charged with, and
learned from the officer that he had wounded
his brother mortally in a quarrel; "They both
was waitin' on the same gal," the attendant
added in explanation.  A man lying at
full-length upon the floor sprang to his feet as they
passed his door, and walked furiously up and
down the narrow room, shaking his head from
side to side, reminding Millicent of a caged
panther she had once seen.  Each dreary,
cramped apartment imprisoned some unfortunate,
either suffering the penalty for, or awaiting
the judgment of, his crimes.  Millicent felt the
chill air of the prison damp and fetid upon her
cheek, and yet she did not hurry down the
corridor, but walked slowly, apparently looking
neither to the right nor left, but with one quick,
sidelong glance, taking in the details of each of
the cells and the faces of the malefactors,
impressions which never faded from her memory.
Some of the men laughed impudently as the
little group passed their cells; and one fellow of
wild aspect buried his face in his hands, with a
sudden movement, as if ashamed of being seen
behind the disgraceful bars.  A pair of youthful
criminals were engaged in playing *moro*, the
great Italian gambling game.  One of the youths
was a native of Italy; and he had evidently
taught his companion in confinement the simple
but exciting game.  No cards or dice, checkers
or other paraphernalia, are needed; the game
is played with the fingers only.  Those of the
left hand keep the account of the game.  With
the right hand a quick movement is made by
both players simultaneously, showing a certain
number of fingers; while at the same moment
each calls out his guess of the number which
his antagonist holds up,--"due"--"cinque"--"tutti."  The
familiar words fell upon Millicent's
ears, and she stopped outside the door, her
cheeks dyed with a flush of pleasure, her eyes
sparkling at the sound of her native language.
She did not remember that she was in a prison;
she thought of nothing but the fact that here
was a compatriot; she spoke to him in a low
voice a few words of greeting.  The fellow
stared at her at first; and then, seeing that hers
was a friendly face, left his seat on the corner
of the narrow bed, came close to the grate and
poured out a torrent of words in the patois of the
Venetians.  When he learned that the signorina
was not only of his country, but from his city,
the poor fellow, whose crime had been nothing
more than participation in a street-fight, was
moved to tears.  Millicent forgot her
companions and the strange place of meeting, and
listened with sympathizing attention to the story
of the man with the dull red-gold hair and white,
delicate features, whose face recalled more than
one friend in the far-off city of her home.  His
profession was that of a cobbler, his name
Giovanni Brogli.  He had drifted out to this strange
country through a love of wandering, and had
been drawn into a street-brawl by some chance
acquaintances, who had robbed him of all that
remained of his small fortune; and when he
would have fought his betrayers, they turned him
over to the police.  True or false, the story was
a pitiful one.  The creature could speak next to
no English; and Millicent's tender heart was
troubled by the recital of his griefs.  She had
no money with her, and before either of her
companions was aware of her intention, she had
untwined a gold serpent of exquisite workmanship
from her throat and held it through the
bars to the man inside the cell.  He looked at
her with wondering eyes, and taking the white
fingers in his own rough, blackened hand, kissed
them reverently, murmuring a blessing which
brought tears to her eyes.

"I say, Princess, you must n't do that sort
of thing;" said Hal, thoroughly scandalized,
pulling her by the sleeve.  "Come on! you
can't stand talking to these rascals and giving
them your jewelry,--it is n't sensible."

She answered impatiently, and then saying
a word of farewell to the prisoner, she submitted
to be led away from the grate by Galbraith,
followed by a fervent parting blessing from
Giovanni of the reddish locks.

"I wish you wouldn't be so absurdly
soft-hearted.  What did you want to give that
beggar your lovely necklace for?" said Hal.

"I had no money with me," half penitently.

"Well, I could have let you have some.  But
it's against the rule.  I should n't wonder if
you got into trouble for doing such a thing,"
continued the young man, who was genuinely
shocked at Millicent's behavior.

"There was no harm done, was there,
Mr. Galbraith?  I won't be scolded.  It was my
serpent; I will do what I choose with my own
things, and will not be dictated to by
you."  Millicent was angry at Deering's very natural
interference; and Galbraith, anxious to spare
her all annoyance, gave Hal a warning kick,
and hurried her towards their destination, lest
she should feel moved to part with any more
of her personal property for the benefit of the
prisoners.

They now entered a small apartment; and
Millicent learned that before the opening of the
trial, she was called upon to identify the
murderer of Ah Lam.  The question was asked,--

"Could you identify, on oath, the man you
saw at Carey's Bridge?  You were under great
excitement at the time; you could hardly be
expected to remember anything beyond the
fact of the killing."

"I am positive I can identify him."

"On oath; are you sure?"

"Perfectly so."

"How could you surely recognize a man you
have seen but once, under very painful
circumstances, six weeks ago?"

"I remember his face distinctly; I should
know his voice among a thousand."

"Be careful; what you say may be put to the
test.  What you state in the court you must be
able to prove."

"I am ready to prove it."

When the moment came for the identification
of the prisoner, Millicent's eyes were bandaged;
and twelve men filed into the room, among
whom she was told was the man arrested for the
crime.  As she had made the assertion that his
voice alone would betray the murderer to her,
she was asked to listen to a sentence repeated
in turn by each of these men.  Three of them
had said the stipulated words, and the fourth
was about to speak, when those who were
nearest to Millicent noticed that she shuddered
violently.

"Let the next man speak."

The fellow looked at Millicent askance, and
then repeated the sentence in a low, unnatural
voice.  He had said but three words when she
interrupted him.

"The person who is now speaking is the man
who assaulted me at Carey's Bridge."

The judge, who had taken a keen interest in
all Millicent had said, now motioned to the men
to change places.  The bandage being removed,
she glanced at the row of men and said,--

"He now stands at the end of the row
nearest the window."

Her expression, as she turned her eyes and
looked in the face of Daniel Horton, was cold and
set as that of one of the younger Fates.  Aversion
and horror were therein painted.  As she spoke
she pointed at the guilty wretch, who moved
uneasily under her gaze, and dropped his bold
eyes before the light in her gray orbs, as if
their fire scorched him.

The preliminaries accomplished, all the
participants adjourned to the court-room, which was
a bare apartment, very grimy, and sadly in need of
paint and soapsuds.  At one end was a slightly
raised table, behind which the judge seated
himself.  He was a singular-looking man, and wore
his hair long, in greasy ringlets falling as far as
the coat-collar.  His stout person was adorned
with a large amount of rather flashy jewelry, and
a pink cravat was supplemented by a bunch
of fuchsias worn in the button-hole.  The space
in front of the bench was railed in by an iron
balustrade painted green.  At the long tables
sat groups of men busily engaged in writing or
in conversation.  A policeman standing near
the judge's desk, when the clamor in the
court-room became unusually loud, pounded on the
floor with his club, whereat the voices grew
lower for a brief space, and then the hubbub
began again.  Somebody seemed to be addressing
the court, though Millicent thought that no
one paid much attention to him.  The entrance
of the prosecuting council in the case of
manslaughter soon to be called, with two of the
chief witnesses, made some stir; and Millicent
was conscious, as she took her place, that the
eyes of all present were fixed upon her.  She
looked wonderingly about the dismal
apartment, with its dirty wooden settles and bare
floor, at the judge on the bench, and at the
crowd of poorly dressed people in the seats
behind her.  Galbraith now entered the little
pen, and, seating himself at the table, proceeded
to look through some papers which his clerk
handed to him, while the man who was
haranguing the court continued his discourse, in
which nobody seemed to take any interest.
Millicent had never been in court before.  Her
only experience of the abodes of justice had
been the long afternoons passed in the
court-rooms of the Doge's palace, studying the
frescoes and beautiful carvings of those famous
apartments.  She had always invested the
precincts of justice with a vague majesty and
splendor.  A judge, in her imagination, was a stately
man clothed in crimson and ermine, with grave,
reverend features, majestic in mien, deliberate
in speech.  When Hal pointed out Judge Croley,
as one of the most distinguished of American
jurists, she was greatly astonished.

"Will he try the case in that dress?"

"Oh, yes; I heard Croley condemn a man to
death in very much the same costume as that
which he wears to-day.  The cravat was a little
brighter pink, I think; and I remember he wore
carnations in his button-hole.  He said in a
pleasant, nonchalant voice, very much the tone
he would use in ordering his farmer to kill a
pair of chickens, 'You are condemned to be
taken to the San Bernardino prison, there to be
hanged by the neck until you are dead, on the
third day of May at twelve o'clock; and may
God have mercy upon your soul!'"

Millicent shuddered as she heard the case
called, and faltered for the first time in her desire
to see justice done to the murderer of Ah Lam.
It is such a terrible responsibility, the taking
of life; can man's law make it guiltless?  The
great question which all of modern thought has
not yet solved, troubled the mind of the young
woman, who could accept no judgment or creed
on faith; she painfully and laboriously solved
the problems of life by the force of her own
reasoning.

"There is Pierson, the counsel for the
defence," whispered Hal, as a little man strutted
up the aisle between the benches full of people,
and entered the green-railed enclosure.  He was
perhaps the most grotesque-looking person
Millicent had ever seen.  His height could not have
been above five feet; and this, with his small
hands and feet, gave him an exceedingly
effeminate appearance.  His small round head was
like a ball, on the surface of which little globular
eyes and a beak-like nose had been very
casually placed.  These features did not seem at all
a necessary part of the head, which resembled
that of a parrot.  Before he spoke he put his
head on one side, in a bird-like fashion; and he
occasionally shook himself, very much as a
canary does when anything has ruffled its
composure.  Millicent had learned from Galbraith
that this man was the most prominent criminal
lawyer in California.  As she looked at his high,
narrow forehead and mean, pinched smile she
thought that among all the malefactors in San
Bernardino prison she had seen no face as bad
as that of Pierson, the great criminal lawyer.  The
prisoner was now brought into the court.  After
stating his name, age, residence, and occupation,
he was asked the question,--

"Are you guilty or not guilty of the wilful
murder of Ah Lam at Carey's Bridge, on the
afternoon of Wednesday, October 16?"

The noisy court-room had grown perfectly
still; and the prisoner's low-spoken answer was
heard in the farthest corner with perfect
distinctness,--

"Not guilty."

The counsel for the defence now stated that
the prisoner acknowledged having been at
Carey's Bridge on the day of the murder.  He
had there seen and spoken to Miss Almsford,
but had fled at the approach of some
gentlemen of the party.  He admitted that he had
assaulted Miss Almsford, but pleaded that he
had no intention of injuring her.

"What were you doing at the mill?"

"I come there to meet a man as I had 'gaged to."

"What man was it?"

The prisoner declined to answer this question,
and finally declared that he did not know the
man's name.

"For what purpose did you meet this man?"

"To do a job as we was hired for."

"And what were you hired to do?"

"To carry off the young lady."

At this astonishing statement a moment's
silence fell upon the court-room, which was
broken by Pierson's sharp voice: he asked his
client to name the person who had engaged
him to kidnap the young girl.

With clasped hands and startled eyes, Millicent
looked into the face of the ruffian, waiting
to hear the name of the man who had plotted
against her.  John Graham, in the excitement
of the moment, stood up in his place to get a
better view of Horton; while Maurice Galbraith
sat with an unmoved countenance, keenly watching
the features of the prisoner at the bar.  The
question was twice put to him,--"Who was the
man?" but he did not speak.  A third time he
was asked.  Finally, he looked at his lawyer,
who nodded slightly; and then, with a defiant
glance toward the artist, at whom he pointed an
unsteady finger, he said,--

"The man as hired me to do the job stands
in this yer court-room.  He calls himself John
Graham."

A moment of silence followed this astounding
statement, succeeded by an incredulous murmur
which ran from mouth to mouth.  From the
confused sounds rang out a deep, clear voice
uttering these words:--

"It is a shameful lie!"  Millicent it was who
had spoken, rising to her feet and stretching out
her arms toward Graham with a gesture of
womanly protection, as if to shield him from
the ruffian's slanderous breath.

Silence was at last enforced, and the
examination of Horton proceeded.  He repeated his
statement that he had not killed the Chinaman,
and that the abduction of Millicent had been
attempted at the instigation of John Graham.
The artist, after the first moment of surprise, said
nothing, but remained perfectly silent, his eyes
fixed intently on Daniel Horton's face.  The
story told by the prisoner was one which bore
some semblance of truth.  He had met his
confederate on the morning of the picnic as had
been previously arranged, and had attempted
to carry off Miss Almsford; but hearing the
voices of the gentlemen had fled.  He had
undertaken the affair some time beforehand,
and had twice visited Graham's studio, where
the artist had made a painting of him in order
to explain his presence there.  A scrap of
paper, soiled and tumbled, was produced, on
which were traced these words in Graham's
handwriting: "Come to the place I told you
of, to-morrow at one; you shall be well paid."  One
o'clock had been the hour of the picnic;
and this note, it was affirmed, had been sent to
Horton on the previous day as per agreement.
On being further examined, the fellow showed
a dogged persistence in his story; and Maurice
Galbraith's adroit cross-questioning failed to
make him contradict his original statement in
any particular.  The day waned as the storm
of words raged; and at dusk the trial was
adjourned until the following day.  As the crowd
filed out of the court-room, Millicent found
Graham at her side.  He was pale, and his dark
eyes flashed angrily.  He was about to speak
to her; and she turned toward him with smiling
lips and eyes, when Henry Deering stepped
between them, and, bowing coolly to the artist,
drew her arm through his own, and, before she
was well aware of his intention, led her from
the room.  The eyes of a dozen curious outsiders
were fixed upon her, and she submitted to be
placed in the wagon, which Hal drove off at a
sharp pace.  The artist remained in the
court-room, where he was presently joined by Maurice
Galbraith, who in a formal voice asked him to
accompany him to his apartment, in order that
they might discuss the new and unexpected
feature in the case.  The two men walked
together down the street, both too much excited
to trust themselves to speak.  As soon as they
found themselves alone in Galbraith's chamber
at the inn, Graham cried excitedly,--

"Galbraith, no one can for a moment believe
that infamous lie,--you can make the fellow
eat his words to-morrow?"

The lawyer folded his arms across his breast,
and looked into his companion's face with a
searching gaze, before he answered slowly and
ironically,--

"Am I to understand, Mr. Graham, that you
deny all collusion in the attempt to carry off
Miss Almsford?"

"Great God! of course I do.  Can you for
a moment doubt me?  *I to carry off Millicent*?
Are you mad to ask me such a question?  Why,
don't you know, man, how much I have cared
for that girl?"

"It is not difficult for the most indifferent
observer to detect your admiration for Miss
Almsford."

"Well?"

"Well, what does that prove?  It is a point
against you that you are supposed to be in love
with the young lady, and gives color to Horton's
accusation."

Graham sank into a seat, and the lawyer
continued,--

"Your great intimacy at the Ranch and your
marked attentions to Miss Almsford were
apparently unaccountably discontinued by your
removal to San Francisco.  This feature is
against you.  You must have seen that in the
eyes of Henry Deering, Horton's statement
needed strong disproving."

"And you, Galbraith, can you for an instant
suspect me of so base, so vile an action?  Is it
possible that a man can be so misjudged?"

"All I have to say, Mr. Graham, is that it is
my hope to prove you innocent of the crime
in which Horton has implicated you.  As the
friend and counsel of Miss Almsford, I prefer to
believe that she was menaced by a vulgar
ruffian and not by a man who might have aspired
to the honor and privilege of guarding her from
every harm.  If you will excuse me, I will see
you in the course of the evening."

With these words the lawyer left the apartment,
his nervous face suffused by a deep flush.
John Graham stared after him for a moment,
and then passed down the corridor and out
into the quiet night, to seek counsel from the
stars in this strange hour of doubt.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVIII.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVIII.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "... the passions of her mind,
   |  As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
   |  Made war upon each other for an hour."

.. vspace:: 2

"Millicent!  Millicent! are you awake?"

It was the evening of the first day of the trial;
and Miss Almsford, sitting in her chamber warming
her pretty feet before the fire, recognized the
voice and answered,--

"Yes, Bab, come in."

It was very late, past twelve o'clock; but
Barbara brought news of a visitor, who would keep
them both from their sleep an hour longer.
Mr. Galbraith was downstairs and must speak with
her.  Miss Almsford gave a little tired sigh, and,
folding her white wrapper about her shoulders,
caught the thick tangle of hair together with a
silver arrow, and, without glancing at the mirror,
left the room and joined the young lawyer in the
library.

"I am so sorry to disturb you, Miss Almsford;
I know you must be tired, but I could not get
here sooner.  Miss Barbara, do not be offended,
but I must ask you to let me see Miss Almsford
alone for a few minutes; would you mind
waiting in the next room?"

When they were alone, the young man seemed
at a loss how to open the interview which he
had sought.  Millicent, tired by the events of the
exciting day, did not seem inclined to help him.
After a long and rather awkward pause, she
turned wearily to her visitor and said,--

"It is about the trial, of course?"

Galbraith bowed an assent.

"About the statement made by that man--"  She
shuddered, as if unable to pronounce his
name.  The young man silently assented again.

"Well, there is nothing to be said by me
beyond what I have already said: it is an infamous
lie!  It is so apparent a fabrication that I should
hardly have thought it necessary for you to give
yourself the trouble to come so far, merely to
hear me repeat what I asserted this afternoon."

"It is your honest opinion, then, that Mr. Graham
has been slandered?"

"My *honest* opinion, Mr. Galbraith?  I do not
know how to give any other.  Are you come to
make me angry?  You had better not, for we
Italians are more easily roused to anger than
soothed.  I am so tired, too; can you not spare me?"

Her voice dropped from the deep, indignant
tone, to a pleading note like that of a tired child.
Maurice Galbraith, leaning quietly against the
mantel-shelf, with downcast eyes and calm face,
seemed strangely moved by the words of the
woman who stood before him, so white and so
beautiful.  He turned toward her; and when he
next spoke, a tenderness had crept all unawares
into his face, which shone with a light whose
meaning she could not fail to understand.  His
very voice seemed a caress addressed to her ear,
so low and gentle was it.

"My child, you do not understand me.  *I* to
make you angry, to add one annoyance to your
life, which is so sad?  Ah! you little know how
gladly--"  He stopped suddenly, warned, by the
rising flush on her cheek, that he was saying
other words than those which he had come to
speak,--"you little know how gladly I would
have spared you the question which it was
necessary for me to ask.  I am now answered."

"But you do not believe me?  I see that--"

"I would believe you if all the angels in heaven
should deny your truth."

She looked at him curiously; she was infinitely
touched by his emotion.  He cared for her; he
loved her with a passion which she could
understand.  He would gladly--oh, how gladly!--have
folded her life about with a protecting care,
keeping the very winds of heaven from her face
if they should blow too roughly; have taken her
in his strong arms, stood between her and all
the world, given her all and been content with
the giving, asking for nought but the right to
protect her.  That she did not love him he
knew; that she cared for another he more than
imagined; and yet he would have been content
to try and win her regard by a life's devotion.

Of all this he spoke not one word, as he stood
looking into her face with burning, tender eyes.
He did not speak, and yet he knew that he was
understood.  The woman gave a little weary
sigh; it was in vain!  To her there was but
one man in all the world.  He said no word, but
stepped toward her with outstretched, pleading
hands, with tender love and pity, asking
nothing, giving all without questioning, without
doubt.  She, who had befriended so many, and
was yet without a friend, who had been
tempest-tossed and shipwrecked before her life-journey
had fairly begun, knew what it was that lay in
Maurice Galbraith's outstretched hands,--the
love of a life, a haven of peace and quiet.  He
was about to speak, to let the love which was
troubling his heart pour itself out in a flood of
words at the portal of her ear; but with a
movement she checked him.  The repellent gesture of
her hand, her averted head and downcast eyes,
answered him.  He understood her as well,
better perhaps than if he had spoken and she had
answered.  It left him another chance, too; later,
when he had shown her how faithfully he could
wait, he might speak the words which she now
refused to hear.  So both were glad that they
had spoken only with their eyes.  She had been
spared the pain of putting into words that which
it would have been hard for him to hear; and
he was glad that she had not spoken the cold
truth which he read in her face.  When she
spoke again, it was to ignore that silent prayer
and its denial.  She took up the thread of the
conversation where they had dropped it:--

"I am glad that you are convinced of this
truth; and I trust that you will bring the others,
Henry Deering most of all, to feel as you do."

The tender look of love died out from Maurice
Galbraith's face.  He turned gloomily away from
the fair woman whose beauty was not for him.

"I cannot tell, I do not know; what man can
judge another?  I said that I believed you; did
I imply that I trusted him?"

Of all cruel griefs endured by Millicent
Almsford, this was the most bitter,--that her lover,
through her fault, should be misjudged; that
in the eyes of others he should suffer.  She
realized now in what a light he had appeared
to Galbraith, to Hal and Barbara, to all the
small circle who had seen their friendship flower
into love, and that flower tossed to the earth
before it had ripened to its fruition.  His
sudden disappearance, her own too obvious grief,
to what could they attribute it but to his
faithlessness?  And now that this base slander had
been cast upon him, they believed it.  He was
compromised, dishonored in their eyes; and the
fault was hers.  As the full significance of all
this struck her, she groaned aloud, clasping her
hands together over her grieved heart as if in
mortal agony.  How could she right him in
their eyes?  How could she dissipate the cloud
which darkened his stainless honor?

There was but one way,--to tell them all the
sad truth.  Her honor against his!  How could
she hesitate, loving him as she did?  And yet
there was a moment of awful suspense.  Her
proud spirit, which had borne unaided and alone
the burden which would have crushed a feebler
soul, revolted at the thought of a new humiliation.
A man's honor is writ on a strong shield
that can be easily cleansed.  It may receive
many a hard blow, and show many a dint,
and yet be as good as those carried by his
mates.  It can be burnished bright again, and
held up for all men to see, its very scars
proving through what battles it has been worn, and
adding, rather than detracting, from its present
lustre.  If all else be lost, let him but give his
life to expiate his sin, and the blot is washed
out from the shield.  But with a woman it is
not so.  Her honor must be maintained by a
shield of crystal, on which the faintest breath of
slander leaves its foul impress; which one blow
dealt by a man's hand shatters irrevocably.  This
is man's code of honor; and as man's voice is
strongest in the world, it is the world's code of
honor.  Only the greatest men set it aside as
unjust; only the strongest refuse to recognize it.

All this Millicent knew.  It was not wonderful
that she hesitated, that she was silent, or
answered the searching questions put to her by the
young lawyer slowly and evasively.  She was
putting off the moment in which she must decide
between his honor and her own.  She remembered
the indignant look Deering had cast upon
Graham in the court-room, the cool manner in
which Barbara had spoken of him, Mrs. Deering's
grieved silence respecting the man who
had been so valued a friend to her, and, worst
of all, Galbraith's openly expressed doubt of his
innocence.  A woman of a smaller nature who
had endured Millicent's cruel experience might,
too, have doubted Graham; but she had
fathomed his nature more truly in a few months
than had his lifelong friends.  She knew that
in it there was no room for one ignoble thought.
His faults she recognized more clearly than
if she had loved him less.  She knew him
to be selfish, with the selfishness of genius; hard
of heart, with the indifference to human pain
common to those men who are capable of
enduring the most terrible suffering; intolerant of
those who differed from him, with the steadfast
knowledge that his thoughts and opinions had
been moulded from no contact with other minds,
but attained with pain and weariness of spirit,
built up from his inner consciousness, the
result of thought and experience, not of the study
of other men's minds and actions.

As Galbraith continued to question her, she
answered clearly all that he said, while her
mind, with a dual consciousness, carried on its
separate train of thought.  She realized that if
Maurice Galbraith were not himself convinced of
Graham's innocence, his efforts to disprove
Horton's accusation would be half-hearted,
perfunctory, and without the moral weight of honest
conviction.  If he were to learn the true reason
of the breach between Graham and herself, he
must know it immediately,--that very night.
That her confession would clear the man she
loved from every suspicion she never doubted,
and yet--she did not speak.  It was so hard to
tell the story of her broken life; she was not
strong enough.  To any other it would have
been easier to bare her secret than to this
man who reverenced her, who had told her,
with look and deed and tender thought, that
he loved her.

Barbara, weary of waiting till the long
conversation should come to an end, had taken her
place at the piano in the adjoining room; and
after playing for some time she struck the
chords of a song full of tender associations to
Millicent.  A wild, passionate melody of
Rubinstein, full of love and hope and youth.  Millicent
had sung it on that night when Graham had
found her waiting for him in the firelight, with
his name upon her lips, though they were still
strangers.  She had sung it then with an
intensity which had brought the grave artist close to
her side, full of enthusiasm for the song, of
admiration for the singer.  She remembered how
he had thanked her silently with a look, while
the others, whose presence she had forgotten,
had been full of warm praises.  A mist of tears
rose to her eyes and gathered itself into
crystal drops of pain.  Moved by the flood of
memories which rushed about her with the tumultuous
waves of sound, she rose, her pride swept away,
her love triumphant; and, with a brow peaceful
with its victory, she spoke.  She told them
all her sad story; while Barbara, summoned to
her side, wept softly at the piteous tale, and
Galbraith, strong man that he was, trembled
with emotion at the words of passionate grief.
Without reserve was the revelation made; the
tragedy of her young life, her meeting with
Graham, her love for him, and the deceit to which
it led,--all were told.  No word of anger had
she for the false friend and dead lover, and no
thought of condemnation of Graham's action.
He was right; he could not have acted
otherwise; he had been frank and true and honest
with her; and she had deceived him!  He had
left the San Rosario Ranch to spare her the
pain of seeing him, and because it was best for
them both that he should go.  The bar between
them was of her forging; the breach was
inevitable; it was her fault, all her fault.  His
thoughts of her had been white as the snow,--"and
cold as ice," muttered Galbraith, to
whom this panegyric of his rival was anything
but gratifying.  At last she was silent; all her
story was finished.  She had spoken standing,
her expressive gestures and changeful face
having done more than half the telling.  She had
begun quietly and with downcast eyes and pale
cheek; now neck and brow were suffused.  She
was pleading the cause of the man she loved with
all the eloquence of youth and beauty.  She
now stood silent, looking eagerly from Barbara's
tear-stained face to Galbraith's pale, set
countenance, to read there the acquittal of the man they
had suspected of baseness and cruelty to her.

Barbara put her arm about the tall girl, and
caressed her tenderly, holding the glorious head,
with its tangled crown of hair, close to her
womanly heart, weeping tears gentle as summer
dew.  Maurice Galbraith reverently lifted to his
lips one long tress which flowed over her
shoulder; and then, leading Millicent from the
apartment, he turned to Barbara.

"You understood it all?"

"Yes."

"I ask you to think of that thing which is
most sacred to you in all the world.  By that
holy thought, swear to me that no word of what
has been said here to-night shall ever pass your
lips; that you will not dare to think of it even,
when you are not alone, lest your face betray you."

He held out his hand to her; and with wide
eyes and trembling voice, Barbara gave the promise
he asked, laying her cold palm in his hot grasp.
To guard the secret of the woman they both
loved, this loyal man and honest woman bound
themselves by a most solemn oath.  To each,
the other was nothing but an ally in this cause.
Their own personalities were lost in the strong
affection for Millicent; they would love her and
protect her always.  As they stood thus, Millicent,
passing up the stairway, saw them through
the open door.  She saw and understood their
compact.  She saw, as they did not, into the
future; and from her heart rose an unselfish
prayer, that the secret of her great misery
might be the first link in a chain that should
bind these two together for life.

Millicent Almsford had pleaded that night
for the man she loved; she had cleared him in
the eyes of two persons whose opinions would
sway those of all who knew anything of his
relation to her.  She had done more: she had
made for herself a friend of a discouraged lover,
a champion who would fight her battles to the
death; and she had bound a gentle, loving
woman's heart to her own by an indissoluble tie.
She had striven only to exonerate John Graham;
and she had made Maurice Galbraith glad that
he loved her, though hopelessly and passionately;
she had filled Barbara Deering with the deepest
sentiment which woman can hold for sister
woman,--a compassionate love.

Though wearied by his long ride and the
exciting events of the day, Maurice Galbraith slept
little that night, and the morning found him
pale and restless.  He had a hard day's work
before him, and perhaps the most trying part
of it was the first duty he had set himself to
perform.  He felt that he owed John Graham
an apology for the suspicion which he had
entertained against him, and which in that moment
of excitement he had made no effort to conceal.
Had not the young lawyer been deeply in love
with Millicent, and consequently extremely
jealous of Graham, it is hardly possible that he
could for an instant have believed the
preposterous charge made against the artist.  But as
Love is blind, and Jealousy is deaf to reason, it
is not strange that, unprepared as he was for
Horton's accusation, he should have believed that
it might have some truth.  Millicent's revelation,
and the calmer reflection which had followed
the interview with her, proved to him how
greatly his judgment had been at fault.
Fervently as he disliked Graham, he had always
respected him; and to his generous mind, the
injustice he had done his rival was abhorrent.
He found the artist at the inn, where they had
parted the previous night.  Graham received
the lawyer with a cold formality: the latter did
not fail to observe the nervous clinching of
the artist's hands as he entered the room.  The
fierce natural instinct of redressing an insult
by a personal chastisement moved the refined
man.  Poet-artist as he was, he would rather,
a thousand times, have grappled with Galbraith
in a fierce struggle, than have been forced to
receive and accept his apology.  Maurice
Galbraith, had he yielded to the impulse which
shook his determination, would have spoken
words which might have justified such an action
on Graham's part.  The men looked angrily at
each other for a moment.  Maurice Galbraith's
words of apology would not utter themselves,
and seemed like to choke him.  He saw that
clinching of the hand, and his brow reddened as
he stepped forward as if to strike the man who
had so easily won, and who so lightly valued, the
love of Millicent Almsford.

In a land where a lower code of ethics and
of honor exists, the insult each burned to cast
upon the other would have been uttered; and
the result would have been a so-called "affair
of honor," in which both men would have run
the risk of bringing blood-guiltiness upon their
souls, and the stigma of murder upon their
honorable names.  The struggle in Galbraith's
breast was short, and human intelligence
triumphed over brute instinct.  His few words
of apology were spoken with cold courtesy, and
accepted with quiet dignity.  The men did not
shake hands; each understood the position too
clearly for that.  They could never be friends;
but, as they were honorable gentlemen, all enmity
was at end between them, for rivalry does not
necessarily entail hatred.  Then they spoke of
the trial, and their conversation lasted until the
hour of the opening of the court.

Millicent, escorted by Henry Deering, arrived
at the court just as Graham and Galbraith
entered the room together.  She saw Graham
whisper something to the lawyer, who bowed
courteously in answer.  The significance of the
action was not lost upon her,--her revelation
had not been made in vain.  She now heard her
name called in a loud, harsh voice.  She started
violently, but did not stir from her seat.

"Come," said Hal, "you must go up to that
little platform and answer all the questions they
ask you."

She walked quietly to the place indicated,
took the customary oath "to speak the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and
answered the preliminary questions in a low voice.

"What is your name?"

"Millicent Almsford."

"Where were you born?"

"In Venice."

"What state?"

"In Italy."

"How old are you?"

"One and twenty."

"You were present at the killing of Ah Lam,
at Carey's Bridge?"

"I was."

"Tell the court all that you saw on that
occasion."  Galbraith was the speaker.  He knew
that Millicent's natural eloquence would give
the story with more force if she were allowed
to tell it in her own way without the usual
questioning.

She began speaking in a low voice, her eyes
fixed on the ground before her.  As the memory
of that dreadful day came back to her, she
seemed to see it all again,--the peaceful
woodland scene, the quiet river, the forest road, and
at her side her humble friend and pupil.  The
walls of the court-room faded from before her,
and judge and jury, lawyer and audience, were
forgotten; she looked at Graham only, and
spoke to him alone; his grave eyes met hers,
and the sympathy in them made the task of
telling her story an easy one.  Aiding her
recital with expressive gestures, she told of the
appearance of Daniel Horton on the peaceful
scene; she repeated his insolent words,
unconsciously imitating the man's manner and
voice; she described the affront offered to herself
with burning cheeks and flashing eyes; her
voice grew tremulous and low when she spoke
of the dead servant's efforts to save her from
the insolent ruffian; when with a deep, horrified
voice she told of the murder and death of Ah
Lam, it was as if she were describing a scene
still enacting itself before her eyes.  A strong
impression was made by the girl's words on all
her hearers.  The noisy court-room had grown
perfectly still; the very recorders held their
pens useless in their hands; and the eyes of
the judge with the pink cravat were riveted on
her face.  As she ceased speaking, a
sympathetic tremor ran through the crowd assembled
in the court-room, and a low murmur was heard.

Maurice Galbraith, usually the most quiet and
reserved of men, was evidently undergoing an
unusual excitement, those who knew him thought;
and Pierson, the counsel for the defendant,
seemed rather disconcerted by the strong
impression made by the witness.

When Graham came upon the stand and told
his story of the night passed in the shooting-lodge,
Millicent listened breathlessly.  The young
painter gave his evidence with a certain
picturesqueness, describing the arrival at the cabin
of Dan Horton, his demand for food and shelter,
his troubled sleep, his wounded face, the peculiar
nature of the scratches, and finally, the finding
of Millicent's handkerchief after his departure
on the following morning.  An effort was made
to disprove the evidence, and an *alibi* was sworn
to by two new-found friends of the prisoner,
who claimed to have passed that night in his
company.  These witnesses, carefully prepared
by Pierson, gave their evidence with few
blunders; and Dan Horton, closely following every
word of the defence, gave a satisfied smile at
the new turn which the skilfully devised *alibi*
seemed likely to give to affairs.

Pierson's aim was to disprove Horton's
identity with the man who had killed Ah Lam and
had afterwards seen Graham.  He endeavored
to show that there were two men engaged in the
affair,--Horton, who had spoken to Miss
Almsford, and his confederate, who, it was argued,
must have committed the crime.  When
Millicent had told of the wounds inflicted by the
Chinaman on the cheeks of his murderer, it
was shown that Horton's face bore no trace of
these scratches.  It was argued, in reply to this,
that in a man of Horton's vigorous temperament
such wounds might easily be healed in as short
time as had elapsed between the murder and the
trial.  At this point Galbraith had a trump card
to play, the existence of which neither prisoner
nor counsel had suspected.  Neither had it been
learned by the omniscient reporter, through
whose instrumentality evidence is too often
prematurely made public, cases are lost, and
offenders are enabled to escape apprehension.

"I would inform your Honor that I have
other proof of the identity of the prisoner with
the man who passed the night following the
murder in the shooting lodge."

A new witness, by name John Du Jardin, by
profession a wood-cutter, was called to the stand.

"Have you ever seen the prisoner before?"

"Yes, before wonce," answered the old Frenchman.

"When was that?"

"The night after murder."

"Where did you see him?"

"At the little 'unting 'ouse of M. Graham."

"What were you doing at the lodge?"

Graham looked at his henchman with a
perplexed expression, and smiled slightly at the
answer.

"I were not in the cabin, I were by the window,
lookin'."

"Oh, you were looking in at the window; and
what did you see?"

"I see monsieur, 'e sleepin'.  I see dat man,"
pointing to the prisoner; "'e come, and
monsieur give 'im to drink and to eat."

"What else did you see?"

"I see *cet homme*, dat man lay 'imself *près*
side by the *feu*.  Presentlee 'e sleep, monsieur
'e mark 'im; 'e take faggot from fire, 'e make
point, 'e draw one picture of 'im."

Here Pierson asked the witness what he was
doing outside the lodge in the middle of the
night.

"I was watch monsieur."

"That seems very strange.  Why did you
want to watch him?"

"'E 'as not slept the night; 'e 'as nothing eat
the day; I fear 'im *malade*.  I follow him."

Galbraith continued his examination, and
elicited from the witness the admission that he had
remained outside the cabin that night, concealed
in the bushes, and had only left it after Horton
had taken his departure.  He had then started
to return, but after he had gone a mile he
retraced his steps with the intention of cooking for
his master's breakfast a brace of quail he had
shot on the way.  He found the cabin empty,
and on the wall the portrait which he had seen
sketched.  It was where it would have been
easily effaced, and so he had loosened the board
on which the drawing was made, and carried it
to his house.

Graham was now recalled and questioned.

"Mr. Graham, you have told the court that
you are an artist by profession.  Is it your habit
to make drawings of persons of a striking appearance?"

"I have the habit of sketching any
remarkable-looking people whom I happen to meet."

"On the night in question, were you impressed
by anything uncommon in the appearance of the
man who slept by the fire in the lodge?"

"I was."

"Did you make any notes of the impression
made on you by the man?"

"I did.  I sketched him as he crouched in the
ashes of the fire."

"What materials did you use?"

"A charred piece of wood, and a smooth board
in the side of the cabin."

"Would you recognize your work if you
should see it?"

"Undoubtedly."

"By what means?"

"I should recognize it as you would your
own handwriting; besides--"

"You have other means of knowing it?"

"My initials will be found in the upper
right-hand corner of the sketch."

"Is this the sketch?"

"It is."

There was a craning of necks, and a murmur
of recognition from those present who could
obtain a glimpse of the strong drawing held up
by Maurice Galbraith.  Graham's words in
answer to the last question were hardly
necessary to prove the resemblance.  Horton, sitting
in his chair, his head thrown back, his hands
clasping his knees, had all-unconsciously assumed
the pose in which Graham had sketched him.
The resemblance was indubitable, and the cheeks
bore the bloody testimony of Ah Lam's hands.

This was evidence which there was no breaking
down; and Horton, when the sketch was at
last turned so that he could see it, gave an oath
under his breath, which was not lost upon the
jury.  The twelve men with whom lay the
decision of Horton's guilt or innocence were for
the most part tradesmen and mechanics, the
only exception being in the person of Mr. Patrick
Shallop, the mining king, who by some strange
chance had been impanelled on this occasion.
The voice of such a man would carry great
weight in the decision.  The case was evidently
going against the prisoner.  The evidence of the
prosecution was very damaging, and Horton's
friends in the crowd were greatly discouraged.

The trial occupied several hours, and ended in
the conviction of Daniel Horton.  Maurice
Galbraith made a speech which has already
become famous.  He had induced a Californian
jury to pronounce a man who had killed a
Chinaman guilty of voluntary manslaughter.  He had
obtained this almost unprecedented verdict, and
a full sentence from the court of ten years'
imprisonment.  The efforts of the defending
counsel to turn the main interest in the case from
the chief feature, by endeavoring to implicate
Graham in the attempted abduction, were
useless.  Horton's real confederate was found, and
the truth of the matter arrived at.  Through
the newspaper accounts of Millicent, published
at the time of her rescue of Graham, these men
had learned that she was a rich heiress, and had
conceived the bold idea of carrying her off in
order to extort a large sum of money for her ransom.

The flimsy tissue of lies which Pierson had
woven was quickly unravelled by Galbraith.
The fact that the jury had for a time been
misled by the false evidence, made their verdict
more immediately unanimous than it might otherwise
have been; and the cloud which had for a
moment overhung John Graham was dispelled
as quickly as a noxious vapor is blown away by
a brisk westerly wind.  He was cleared of every
suspicion.  Galbraith had surpassed himself in
his management of the case, even in the eyes of
his warmest friends.  Had he not been working
for the woman he loved?  In exonerating his
rival, he had done the only thing that in him lay
to win Millicent's gratitude.  She had thanked
him, and blessed him for his eloquence with tears
and smiles.  He had gained her friendship; and
does not friendship soften into love more often
than love crystallizes into friendship?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIX.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Je me dis seulement; à cette heure en ce lieu,
   |  Un jour, je fus aimé, j'aimais, elle était belle.
   |  J'enfouis ce trésor dans mon âme immortelle.
   |  Et je l'emporte à Dieu!"

.. vspace:: 2

"A letter for you, Mr. Graham."

"Very well; lay it down."

The burly landlady placed the missive on the
small, unpainted pine table which stood near
the artist's easel, and with a last glance at the
feminine superscription, and the device of the
golden Psyche which sealed it, left the room.
It was late in the afternoon,--there would be
only an hour more of light in which he could
paint.  Graham did not glance at the letter.
If it had been a telegram it would have waited
till the tender gray of the sky had been laid on
the canvas.  At last it grew too dim for him to
distinguish the tints on his palette, and,
throwing down his brushes, the young man rose and
stretched his cramped limbs.  He had not moved
from his stool for four hours.  As he paced up
and down his narrow room, the letter caught
his eye.  He had quite forgotten its existence.

It was from Millicent.  He stepped close to
the window, and by the waning light perused
the words traced by a hand that surely had
trembled in the writing.  Twice he read it
through, as if not understanding its import.
Then, with a groan, he cast the letter upon the
floor, and sank upon a low seat near by.  His
head supported by his hands, his elbows upon
his knees, he sat, the picture of despair.  With
a sudden movement he grasped the missive and
crushed it between his two hands, as if to avenge
upon the senseless paper the pain which it
brought to him.

He could not bear it in the cold, dark room;
the streets would be full of people who might
divert him.  He soon found himself in a crowded
thoroughfare.  It was six o'clock, and the city
was full of hurrying men, women, and children
returning homeward after the long day's work.
The girl from the millinery establishment under
his room, whose sweet, childish face he had
painted from memory the very day before, was
just leaving the shop as he stepped into the
street.  She was very poorly dressed, with a
hat which would have disgraced anybody but
a milliner's apprentice.  Her dress fitted neatly,
however, and she gave her close-cut jacket a
tug to make it smooth about the shoulders
before she reached the corner.  A tall, pale,
dyspeptic-looking youth joined her just outside the
druggist's.  Graham recognized him as the
clerk in a dry-goods shop near by.  Their
greeting he could not but overhear.

"I am late, George--"

"Twenty minutes; I almost gave you up," in
a surly tone.

"I am so sorry; don't be angry."  The man
hesitated a moment; then her pleading voice
got the better of his ill-temper, and, taking her
by the arm after the fashion of his kind, he led
her across the street, and in a moment they
were lost to Graham's sight.  He next stopped
at the cobbler's around the corner to call for a
pair of boots which had needed repairing.  The
narrow stall was brightly lighted, and he saw
through the window a little child holding up
its face to be kissed.  The cobbler's girl had
just brought her father his supper.  As
Graham entered, the man pushed the little figure
gently into the street.  "Tell mother I 'll not
be late," he said; and wiping his blackened
hands upon his dirty ticking apron, he greeted
the artist civilly, and proceeded to find his boots
for him.

"They need re-soling, Mr. Graham, but I did
not like to do the job without orders.  The
patches are all right."

Graham paid the man for his work, and went
out.  He had thought to find distraction in the
street, but what he saw there only made him
more desolate.  He was alone, while all other
men had some loving soul to greet them after
their day's toil.  The pair of lovers, the cobbler
and his child, made him feel his loneliness more
acutely, and emphasized painfully the news which
the letter had brought to him,--Millicent was gone!

She had passed as suddenly and unexpectedly
out of his life as she had entered it.  He had
not seen her since that day in the court-room.
And now she was gone, back to the Old World,
to Venice the mysterious, the silent, to the old
Palazzo Fortunio, with its lofty halls and marble
corridors, back to the old home, which he knew
could never be home to her again.  All the
color seemed to have faded out of his life; she
had taken it with her.  He suffered deeply,
impatiently, angry at himself for suffering, yet
powerless to forget the pain which the letter
had given him.  He picked it up again from
the floor when he came back to the lonely
studio, and marked that though the letter was
crushed and torn, the device of the golden
Psyche was still intact.

On the following day he found some consolation
in his picture.  He came back to it after
his vigil with an uncherished grief, with less
enthusiasm than before; but from that hour
until he had laid the last stroke of paint on the
canvas, his hand faltered not, if his imagination
sometimes flagged.  He could not serve both
love and art.  He had chosen his mistress, and
would be faithful to his choice.  He dared not
think, while he painted, of the woman whose
influence had so warmed his frozen existence.
To do so seemed an infidelity to his Art,--a
breach of faith which would not escape its
merited punishment.  So he resolutely put her
from his mind, and labored day and night upon
his great picture.

Summer and autumn were past, and the first
month of winter was drawing to its close, when
Graham finished his picture.  He had painted
it as he always did his best works, without
interruption.  From the morning on which he
had made the first rough chalk sketch, until the
day when he reluctantly drew the fine veil of
varnish over his work, he had hardly looked at
any other canvas.  He was not satisfied with
it,--what true artist ever is satisfied with his
work?--and yet he was convinced that it was the best
he had yet accomplished.  He had sometimes
realized what he had sacrificed for this picture;
and as he touched in the crimson line of sunset,
the fancy came to him, that the sky was stained
with heart's-blood.

His few brother artists--there was but a
handful of them in the city--and his pupils
requested him to set a day for them to see the
new picture, and Graham had consented.  The
young sculptor, who had the next room, threw
open the door which separated the two studios,
and both rooms were in holiday trim.  Northcote
had been in the country all the previous day,
gathering flowers and ferns with which to deck
the bare apartment.  He placed a jar of roses
before the picture with a reverent face; he loved
the artist whose light purse had for the last
two years kept a roof over his head and life in
his body.

Graham was greatly admired by the knot of
artists who lived, or starved, in San Francisco.
They were the pioneers of art in the new
Western land; and their work, if crude and
untutored, was not wanting in certain strong
qualities.  Several of them were men of promise; and
they were all wise enough to feel that in
Graham's genius lay the brightest hope for a new
school of art which should combine the knowledge
of the Old World with the fresh vigor and
hope of the New.  They looked up to him as a
leader, and he earnestly wrought and thought
for their advancement.  It was for this that he
had left Europe and his many agreeable
associates there, and returned to his own country,
that whatever power for good there in him lay
should redound to her glory.  His fellow artists
all revered him, and they would gladly have
loved him; but the sensitive man shrank from
that familiarity which popularity entails.  In
their work he was always interested; and in
whatever touched the art they all served, he was
active and ready to labor endlessly without
recompense or recognition.  But in their lives and
personalities he felt no wish to mix; and so it was
that he who labored most for them as an artist
was farthest removed from them as a man.

There was but one verdict rendered by the
men who stood grouped about the easel.  It was
a masterly picture, they all said.  For an hour
or more, one or another of them discussed
certain technical points with Graham, who with
kindled face listened and talked with his
associates, more himself than he had been since the
night when he had first dreamed of the
picture.  The young sculptor was less loud in his
praise than were the others; in his eyes the
classic subject was a trifle labored and cold.
After having praised, the men felt at liberty
to criticise; and if Graham had followed one
half the advice offered to him, there would
have been little suggestion of the original
picture left.

Standing in a corner, with its face to the wall,
was a panel which, as the little circle was
about to break up, Northcote asked Graham's
permission to show.  The new picture was taken
from the easel, and the neglected canvas put in
its place.  Its surface was dusty, and the young
man wiped it with his silk handkerchief.  There
was a minute's silence, broken by the oldest of
the party, a disappointed painter whose life had
been one long series of calamities.

"My boy, this is worth a dozen of the other.
It is the biggest thing you have done yet."

The younger men all chimed in, echoing the
opinion of their senior.  Graham looked
incredulously from one to the other; there was no
doubting their sincerity.  Like many another
before him, he knew not how to distinguish his
successes from his failures.  The old artist, who
had all his life been on the eve of painting his
great picture, underrated the value of the new
picture, but he was not mistaken in placing
The Lovers far above it.  Graham looked at
it for the first time in many weeks, with that
impersonal criticism of his own work which is
only possible to an artist when a certain period
has elapsed after its creation, and the mind has
been occupied with other interests.

It was late that night when the artist returned
to his room, after dining with his sculptor friend
at a restaurant near by.  The moonlight flooded
the studio, lighting its farthest corner.  It
showed him the vases of rose-bloom and the
dark-browed Circe on the wall; it showed him
the blackened hearth, where the embers still
smouldered.  And what was that in the
fireplace?  A charred wooden frame with a heap of
ashes lying 'twixt its sides.  Graham sprang
forward with a cry of apprehension, and lifted
the blistered frame.  His fear had not been
groundless: this bit of wood and that handful
of cinders were all that remained of his great
new picture!  He gave a deep groan and
staggered back against the wall.  Before him, on the
easel, gleaming through the pure silver light, was
the picture of The Lovers.  Millicent's dreamy
face, radiant with hope and love, smiled at him
from the arms of the lover who now stood,
half crazed with grief, gazing at the ruin before him.

The young sculptor stood beside him, full of
a sympathy he knew not how to express.  At
last he spoke:--

"Graham, look up, and do not grieve for what
is past help.  I tell you, man, that your
greatest picture stands before you.  The Lovers has
the one quality which your work has heretofore
missed.  It is human, it is full of natural
sentiment.  It does not appeal to an aristocracy of
thought, but to all men and all women, learned and
untaught.  I know not what influence swayed
you in this picture, but I know that it lifted you
to a higher plane than you had before attained.
I care not for the loss of your Poet; it told me
nothing of you that I did not know before; it
was a step backwards to the time when you
made that wondrous wicked Circe with her herd
of swine.  Let it go, and submit to the influence
which inspired this picture, for which the world
is richer to-day than for a score of such works
as the other."

Graham looked at the speaker with doubting
eyes.  The words seemed to rouse an echo in
his soul.  They told him that he had served the
altar of Art with Moloch sacrifices.  Instead of
the peaceful offerings of love, he had brought
the anguish of two strong hearts to desecrate
her temple.  A dim perception of the truth
entered his mind, and his grief for the lost
picture was for a moment forgotten in a doubt
which rose before him, never to be dismissed
again until it was fully solved.  A doubt of self,
of his own judgment, of his own inflexible will.

.. vspace:: 2

Millicent was gone!  The six straight
redwoods whispered the news one to another, and
shook their tall tops sadly, while the sweet south
wind sighed through their branches.  Millicent
was gone! and the roses that clasped and clung
about her lattice died on the night she left them,
and the vine bloomed no more, and bore for that
season nothing but leaves.  Millicent was gone!
She had set wide the door of the golden prison
where her love-birds had lived and sung so
merrily through the long summer.  But the little
white creatures, prison-born, prison-bred, were
too timid to venture out into the roomy forest,
and had clung to the only home they had ever
known; and so Barbara, gentle, sweet-souled
Barbara, took them into her sunny room; and
cared for them as Millicent had done.  For a
day they were silent, and then they sang as
merrily as before.  There was still sunshine; and
crispy groundsel and clear cool water were given
them by hands as gentle, if not so fair, as those
which had tended them before.

The New Year was at hand, and the *châtelaine*
of the San Rosario Ranch had summoned
a group of friends to her hospitable home to
pass the holiday time.  So Barbara was full of
household cares, and Hal was busy with
shooting and riding expeditions.  Ferrara was there,
just back from Alaska, with a tribute of rare
furs to lay at Barbara's pretty feet.  Maurice
Galbraith and John Graham were missing, and
that other whose absence was still keenly felt.
Mr. and Mrs. Shallop, O'Neil, and Hartley
were come, with a half dozen other old friends,
all bound together by the magnetic influence
which radiated from their hostess, in whom all
their various interests were concentrated.  Each
was friend to other for her sake, whom they all
loved.  In the existence of every one of the
group her pure and unselfish nature was a real
factor.  When faith in human nature, in one's
self, is faint and wavering, then is the time
when the remembrance of such a spotless life,
so pure a heart, steadies the wavering belief in
truth, and strengthens us to fight the good
fight.  By loving help and by high example,
Marianne Deering had succored and befriended
each of the friends who on that New Year's
eve assembled about her dining table.  With a
face bright with that beauty of the soul which
knows not the marring of time, she presided
over the gay festivity.  Three pretty cousins
from San Francisco added their bright faces to
the charming scene.  The apartment and the
board were garlanded with flowers.  Banks of
heavy ferns panelled the walls, and bunches
of white, heavy-scented magnolias were outlined
against their dark green.  Through the open
windows were seen the gay lanterns hung about
the veranda, illuminating the festoons of fresh
creepers, and giving glimpses of the soft velvet
turf outside.  The merriment was at its height
as Barbara lifted the loving-cup, filled with a
sweet, strong wine, and, calling out the toast,
"To absent friends," set her rosy lips to the
brim, and drank from the cup in which each
of the joyful company was to pledge some
distant dear one.  It was a custom at the San
Rosario Ranch which had become time-honored.
The girl smiled gayly as she passed the
crystal beaker to Juan Ferrara, who sat upon
her right; but her eyes were dark with unshed
tears, and the man sighed as he drank,
omitting to repeat the toast.  What were absent
friends to him beside this woman who smiled
in his face, but whose tears fell for one who
was far from her!  Round went the cup from
hand to hand, and to every heart came a thrill
of joy or sorrow at the thought of the absent
one, toward whom it turned in this loving
communion.  O'Neil, sitting by his hostess, was
the last to take the cup.  The warm-blooded
Irishman was in high spirits.  The glances of
the dark-eyed "girling" at his side, and the
general good-fellowship of the occasion, had
brought out in him the irrepressible good-humor
of his nation.  The ceremony of passing the
loving-cup, and the invocation to absent friends,
had carried something a little serious with it,
which, to the jolly Irishman, was thoroughly
antagonistic.

"Dear hostess," said he, placing the cup
before him on the table, "I do not like the
sentiment of your toast; 't is ungallant.  How can I,
sitting between two such lovely ladies, find time
or power to salute an absent one, howsoever
fair?  May I give you my toast for the
loving-cup?  Have I your permission to sing a stave
from one of my national songs on the subject?"

He was answered by a general acclamation
of assent.  Rising to his feet, the blond, burly
giant held up the cup with its low ebb of
crimson wine, and sang in a clear, strong voice the
following couplet:--

   |  "Oh! 't is sweet to think that where'er we rove
   |    We are sure to find something blissful and dear,
   |  And that, when we 're far from the lips that we love,
   |    We 've but to make love to the lips that are near.
   |  The heart, like a tendril accustomed to cling,
   |    Let it grow where it will, cannot flourish alone,
   |  But will lean to the nearest and loveliest thing
   |    It can twine with itself, and make closely its own.
   |  Then oh! what pleasure where'er we rove
   |    To be sure to find something still that is dear;
   |  And to know, when far from the lips that we love,
   |    We have but to make love to the lips that are near."
   |

Amidst the general laughter and applause
which followed O'Neil's song, Madame
Marianne's gentle word of disapproval was lost.
The song had restored the jollity which, for a
moment, seemed to have left the party.  O'Neil
now drained the cup to the last drop, turning
the crystal vessel upside down to show that it
was empty, and whispered a saucy compliment
to the bright-eyed girl beside him.  At that
moment, when the merriment was at its height,
when O'Neil stood with the empty cup in his
hand, the door opened, and, as if in answer to
the toast, John Graham entered the room.  He
was greeted by a dozen voices as he made his
way to Mrs. Deering's side.  Taking her
outstretched hand in his own, he dropped upon
one knee, and kissed it respectfully.

"Dear my lady, I have come to wish you the
happiest New Year, and to join in your
loving-cup, in your toast to absent friends--"

"Always welcome, dear Graham," said the
lady, laying her hand upon his head for an
instant; "there is always a place for you at our
table, but alas--"

"You are too late--too late!"

It was Barbara who spoke, interrupting her
mother brusquely, her voice full of a reproach
inexplicable to all but Graham.  He looked at
her fixedly for a moment, and then O'Neil
clapped him on the back, and held up the empty cup.

"Too late, old fellow, as Miss Barbara says.
Never mind," in a lower key, "I have promised
Deering to brew an Irish punch, after the
ladies withdraw."

The artist stared a moment at the goblet, and
shivered as he took the place which had been
made for him beside his hostess.  Soon the
signal was given for the ladies to leave the room;
Graham's arrival having precipitated the
breaking up of the party.  The new-comer did not
long remain in the dining-room, but presently
followed his hostess into the library, where he
found Barbara at the piano.  Mrs. Deering
signalled him to take a place at her side.

"I fear I took too great a liberty in coming
unasked.  O'Neil says I stalked into the room
like a stage ghost, and cast a gloom over the
party."

"You know you are always welcome here.
You used to call the Ranch your home."

"Have I still a right to do so?  Things seem
so changed, my lady."

"You will never find me changed while I can
help you.  I did not send for you, knowing that
you would come if it was best for you."

"And yet I came too late!"

"Graham, there are no such words as too late
to those who know how to wait.  That phrase is
only for the impatient, not for the steadfast.
But now tell me of yourself, of your work; it
is so long since we have seen you."

"Of myself, no! of my work, yes.  I have
finished my picture; it has gone to Paris.  It
will now be judged by other men."  He did not
tell her of his loss, or that he had sent The Lovers
in the place of the burned picture.

"May they prove kindly critics."

"No, I do not want that; I do not insist that
they shall praise my work; I only question, can
they understand it?"

"But that is the least of it all, you have
sometimes said."

"Ah!  Madonna, I have been wrong.  What
use is there for me to speak if there be no one to
hear?  If they do not understand, the fault must
lie in me.  I must learn to speak the broad
language of humanity.  I cannot ask men to
puzzle themselves with my small vernacular."  The
man sighed deeply, and his friend noticed
that he was paler and thinner than she had last
seen him.

"You have been over-working, Graham; you
lead an unnatural life when you are in town,
now that your people are away.  Why not come
back to the tower again?"

"I think I will, Madonna."

He had been over-working, and for what?
That the picture for which he had sacrificed so
much, should be seen one brief hour by a dozen
men!  He now felt in what a strained condition
his nerves had been.  The picture was gone,
and with it the strong excitement which had kept
him alive and alert.  The tension was relaxed,
and an intense depression had followed, which
was in turn losing itself in a new feeling.  A
lonely longing, a craving for a tender womanly
sympathy, for the only human being who had
never misunderstood his many moods, who was
always in sympathy with him in joy or sorrow.
She alone in all the world could have helped
him at this time; to her he could have confided
all those delicate shades of thought which drifted
through his mind, too fragile ever to be prisoned
in words.  She could have divined those
half-formed ideas and crystallized them into steadfast
utterances.  He was cold, bitterly cold, and
suffered for that loving human sympathy as the
parched hillsides had but now longed for the
refreshing rain which had made the earth green
and fair after the long summer drought.  He
had chosen Art for his mistress, and she had
smiled upon him chastely and coolly; and yet he
was not content.

Barbara left the piano, and Graham joined her.
The over-punctilious courtesy with which he had
always treated her was forgotten.  He spoke
suddenly and sharply:--

"What did you mean by what you said to me,--why
am I too late?"

"I meant too late for a draught from the loving-cup."

"You meant more than that."

"If you choose to fancy--"

"I cannot but choose to *know*."

By this time the gay group from the dining-room
had flooded the library with their ringing
voices, their merry faces.  Only these two were
pale and out of harmony with the scene.
Barbara, with downcast eyes, stood by the piano,
tapping her fingers nervously on the polished case.

"I have interrupted your festivity; I have
been a very skeleton at the feast; forgive me,--I
could not help coming,--forgive me and answer
me one question, and I will go and leave you in peace."

"I say, Bab, we are going into the
drawing-room to tell ghost stories.  O'Neil has a
splendid one,--a real Irish family banshee yarn.
Come on, you and Graham."

"In a moment, Hal, don't wait for us; we will
join you before you are all settled and Mr. O'Neil
has begun."

The library was again empty.  The voices of
the holiday folk reached their ears across the hall.

"Tell me what you have heard from her."

There was no need of speaking her name.
Her face looked at them from its place over the
mantel-shelf,--a quick, strong sketch made by
Graham.  From a leafy background white
shoulders, and a fair face with deep eyes, were
shadowed forth.  The firelight, falling restlessly
upon the picture, touched into light now the full
red mouth, now the ivory throat.

"I have not heard for some time.  She was
in Venice again, very ill from the long journey,
when she last wrote."

"You have not heard since?"

"No."

"Do you think she is well now, and--and at peace?"

"No."

"What reason have you to doubt her well-being?"

"I cannot tell you."

The man looked at her searchingly, as if he
would read her very soul, and then turned away
with a word of leave-taking,--"Good-night."

"Stay a moment.  I have something to tell
you.  I do not know why I am forced to speak
to you of the last interview she had in this room,
but I must do so.  Before she left,--on the
night when she cried out in the court-room,--you remember?"

Did he remember?  Ah, Heaven! only too
well he remembered the last words she had
ever spoken to him,--valiant words, full of
love and protection.

"That night Mr. Galbraith came to see her.
It was very late, and they had a long conversation.
I could only hear their voices from the
next room; and then she called me to her, and
told us both all her sad story,--all that had
passed between you and her.  She took all
blame upon herself, and would have made us
both acknowledge that you had been right and
just in acting as you did."

"And was I not just?"

"Just, perhaps; but how ungenerous!  What
have you to do with justice?  You, who never
painted till you painted her; you, who were so
cold and unfeeling till her smile made you
human for a little time.  Then your own selfish
egotism froze you again."

"Thank you for what you have told me, and
good-by.  I shall not see you soon again.  You
were very good to her; bless you for it!  Every
one was good to her,--every one but me, it seems."

"You speak as if she were dead."

He did not hear her last words.  He was
already out of earshot, taking leave of his
hostess.

When he was alone with the stars he could
think better than in that heated room, with
that dear vine-crowned face before his eyes,
with Barbara's voice in his ears.  He saw how
Barbara misjudged him.  He knew that most
men and women would have held him as she
did; and yet he had thought that he was right.
He had fought the good fight, and he had
conquered.  What mattered it if all the world
saw in him a monster of selfishness?  He had
chosen poverty, hard work, and loneliness, when
wealth, worldly success, and a painless love
might have been his.  Sybaris had been open
to him; and he had turned his back upon the
perfumed island for an attic, a crust, and a
mistress who demanded all, and had yielded
nothing but hope.

But now things were altered.  He felt angry
and outraged at the thought that others knew
her story, that she was pitied by them because
of her great love for him.  He longed to
protect her, to suffer for her, to make her forget
in his love and care the cruel lot which had
been hers.  He yearned for her sympathy, for
her love, for that sense of peace which had
come upon him as he sat by her side.  The
tide of love, which not once in a million years
is at the full in two human hearts at once,
rushed over him, sweeping away pride, reason,
selfishness, ambition,--all, all routed and o'erset
by that warm, delicious flood of emotion.  He
had fought against love so long, that at last
the overthrow of will brought him an ecstasy
of delight.  He ran like one crazed through the
cool, starry night, singing a love-song strange
and tender, a song of submission, of hope and
passionate love.  Through the orchard he passed,
startling the birds with his wonderful song.  The
prisoned love-mates heard it in their little nest,
and folded their snowy wings closer together;
the white roses heard it, and trembled at the
sound; the six tall redwoods listened and
whispered gravely together as he came among them
and sank upon his knees at their feet, on the
very spot where she had sat that day.  That
day!  How could he have forgotten it, and all
that it had meant to them both?  What mist
had risen again between them and hidden its
memory from his sight?  Before, it had been
her want of faith in him, her fault, her only
fault.  Her atonement for that sin against her
own soul, against him, had been bitter indeed.
And afterwards what veil had blinded him to
the great truth that they loved each other
absolutely, that their two beings were each
incomplete without the other?  His pride!  It had
been his pride which had kept them so long
apart!  But now it was over.  He would go to
her, and tell her all.

"Millicent, Millicent, I love you!" he cried
aloud, his eager voice surging from his breast
as if to relieve its weight of love.  His cry was
joyous, bounding, full of life and love and hope.
The night wind bore back to his ears a tender,
mournful cadence,--"love you."

"Millicent, my love, I am coming; wait for me!"

"Wait for me!" sighed the echo.

And the young moon, pale and shrinking,
dropped behind the high tree-tops from his
sight; while the redwoods swayed tremulously,
shaken by a sudden blast, and the echo again
sighed its faint response,--

"Wait for me!"

And the tide on the Pacific was at the flood.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XX.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Malheureux! cet instant oû votre âme engourdie
   |    A secoué les fers qu' elle traine ici-bas,
   |  Ce fugitif instant fut toute votre vie;
   |    Ne le regrettez pas."

.. vspace:: 2

It was a wonderful morning which saw the
birth of the new year in Venice,--one of those
clear, bright days on which Winter lays aside
all his severity and assumes the smiles of the
Spring still asleep in the bosom of the stiffened
earth.  The *piazza* was filled with a motley
crowd of holiday folk, and the lagoons swarmed
with a fleet of gondolas and *sandalos*.

Before a mighty marble house which stands
where one of the smaller thoroughfares sweeps
its waters into the Grand Canal, a gondola has
paused.  A young man, a foreigner evidently,
steps from the boat and passes under the fretted
archway, with an admiring glance at the
beautiful carving.  He is pressed for time, but he
stops for a moment to glance into the square
cortile, with its group of almond-trees and its
playing fountain.  He is met at the wide
doorway by a servant, of whom he asks, in the best
Italian he can muster, for the Signorina
Almsford.  The black-browed menial politely replies
that it will be impossible for him to see the
signorina; she is not at home to visitors.  No
further answer can the stranger obtain to his
eager inquiries.  A gold piece unlocks the tongue
of the menial at last, and he informs the young
man, in excellent English, that the signorina
has been ill ever since her return from America,
a month and more ago.

"She has been very ill; Girolomo says that
she will die, and the Signor Almsford himself
fears the worst.  She has not left her room
once.  To-day being a *festa*, she has fancied to
go out with Girolomo in the gondola, and I am
to help him carry her downstairs."

As he finished speaking, the man noticed that
the visitor had grown very pale, and now stood
leaning against a marble pillar as if for support.
When he spoke again it was to send his card
to Mr. Almsford.  On being admitted to an
outer reception room he sank upon a chair, his
face hidden in his hands.  Soon he was bidden
to enter.  The signorina had learned of his
arrival, and it was her pleasure to see him.

The young man passed through a long suite
of stately rooms, scarcely noticing the rich
furnishing and decorations.  Before a curtained
doorway he hesitated for a moment, but the
servant, pushing aside the heavy portiére, left
him no choice but to enter.  Before him,
reclining in a great chair, lay a figure which he
had last seen full of health and strength.  From
a pile of sea-green cushions smiled a face which
he had known when it was glorious with the
freshness of youth.  The color which the red
rose of love had brought to her cheek had faded
now; she was like a flower no longer, but a great
white pearl shimmering through pale waters.
She smiled, and held out her hand to her
countryman; and Maurice Galbraith, bowing low over
the small fingers, strove to hide his face from
the great hollow eyes which looked inquiringly
into his own.

"I am so glad you have come.  I do not
even ask what has brought you, it is so good to
see some one from home."

It had become "home" to her now, the country
which she had so long repudiated.  "Home"
after a half year's residence; "home," though the
language spoken there was to her a foreign one.
The meeting is not without its tears, the
pleasure not unmixed with pain.  Eager questions
are asked, and faithfully answered.  Millicent's
visitor brings her tidings and tender messages
from far-off friends.  He is rewarded for his
pains by a faint smile which glimmers over the
pale features, rising in the deep eyes and losing
itself in the tender curves of the mouth.  Beside
the couch stands a delicate bronze table wrought
by no less cunning a hand than Benvenuto's.  A
vase of flowers and a crystal bell are here placed.
The musical note of the bell now summons a
domestic, who bows at the order given, softly
disappears, and soon re-enters, bearing a salver
on which are a plate of fruits and a bluish
decanter, with glasses of the dainty Venetian
fashion.  From the delicately tendrilled flask
Millicent pours a clear golden wine whose perfume
permeates the apartment.  She fills both glasses,
and, touching the edge of hers to the rim of his,
bids him drink to the health of the dear ones at
home.  Galbraith stops the musical ring which
the contact has drawn from the tumbler by
touching the edge with his finger in a
mechanical manner.  It was one of the
superstitions which had waned to a habit with him.

"Why do you drown that sound of good cheer?"

"Because my grandmother told me when I
was a little child that if a glass rang itself out
to silence, the sound was sure to prove a death-knell."

"Listen, you can still hear mine faintly.  It
is a wonderful wine, connoisseurs say, this
Lacrymæ Christi of ours.  How different, is it not,
from the strong red wine of California that you
gave us that day,--do you remember?--when
we feasted with you under the fig-tree."

"As different as you were to the rest of us
gathered about the board that day."

"And yet I would give all the wine that lies
mellowing in the cellars of the palace for one
cup of your good Los Angelos vintage."

The wine seemed to spread through her frame
like a flame.  It brought a flush to the pale
cheeks and strength to the fragile body.  She
arose and walked unsupported across the room
to a dusky mirror.  She wrapped herself in a
garment of silvery fur, and together they left the
room fit for the boudoir of a princess.  At the
doorway Girolomo awaited them.  Waving aside
the domestic who stood ready to assist him, the
strong gondolier lifted the delicate figure and
bore it unaided down the marble stairs.  He
laid her light weight gently among the cushions
of the gondola, and assuming his oar with the
incomparably graceful movement of his guild,
rowed the black-hooded craft down the Grand
Canal.  To the young American, the awe and
mystery of the place are not yet familiar; and
as the boat glides between the rows of mighty
palaces, he wonders if the strange scene is the
fabric of his own dream.

But no; when he looks into the face of the
woman lying amid the cushions, he knows that
it is all true, and that this shadowy figure is
more real to him than all the men and women
he has ever known.  Presently they emerge into
the broader waters of the lagoon, where lie the
fisher craft, with their many-colored sails spread
to dry in the afternoon breeze.  The smooth
green water is marked here and there with the
black mooring-piles, which throw a shadowy
outline on the changeful tide.  To the American,
bred in a land where Art is in its cradle, and
beauty exists in its more austere aspect alone,
the glory of the spectacle, the wondrous
architecture, the wealth of color, are intoxicating.
The western sky glows with the first pale tints
of the sunset, against which a score of spires
are darkly outlined.  The air is musical with soft,
distant chimes, and the song of the gondoliers
is rhythmic to the motion of their oars.  From
the shore come cheerful sounds of holiday folk;
and now and then a *sandalo* sweeps past them
with a freight of joyous pleasure-seekers.  In
one of these a group of masqueraders are
singing a gay love-ballad.  Millicent hums the
refrain to herself, and answers pleasantly to the
noisy greeting with which one of the party hails
them.  A young girl, with the red-gold hair of
her people, turns and looks long into Millicent's
face.  She wears over her broad shoulders a
leopard-skin for warmth; while her head, with
its glorious crown of hair, has no other
protection than the doubtful one of a garland of roses.
As she looks at Millicent, she takes the fragrant
wreath from her brow, and, with a graceful
salutation, tosses it into the gondola.  In a moment
the strong strokes of the two rowers carry the
*sandalo* out of sight, and Galbraith lays the
flowers in Millicent's lap.

"May the saints bless the child!  'T is the
tribute of happiness and beauty to grief and pain."

The air has grown chill with the down-dropping
of the sun, and Girolomo, unbidden, turns
the gondola homeward.  As they float past the
familiar places, Millicent looks long and steadily
at the scenes which are so dear to her.  She
shivers as the Bridge of Sighs looms dimly forth,
and smiles again at the familiar faces of the
boatmen on the steps of the *piazzetta*.

"I am so glad that you have seen me in the
city of my birth; you can understand me now
as you could never have understood me over
there.  Dear, dreamy Venice, where great vices
and greater virtues have flourished more grandly
than anywhere else in the world!  And now it
is all past, her glory and her pain; and knowing
this, we make the best of the pleasant things
left to us.  We steep ourselves in her rich beauty,
content with its perfection; we con over her
mysterious legends, and forget that other nations
are living, striving, working, and making their
histories, while we are dreaming and playing our
lives away.  Your great Saxon virtue, 'Truth,'
is meaningless to us; we are content with Beauty."

"And you are happy--contented; you are
willing to pass the rest of your life here?"

"Yes, and no.  I could never be satisfied to
drop back into the old easy life.  I have drunk
too deeply of the strong, new wine of Los
Angelos, to be content with the mellow vintage of
the Abruzzi."

"And yet there is fermentation of a strong,
new wine here, in your wondrous Italy.  All do
not dream of the past; there are men and women
who foretell a new existence to the land, now that
the old shackles of tyranny and superstition are
dropping from her cramped limbs."

"Yes; but it is a volcanic soil.  Everything
is so sudden and so shifting.  There will be
changes, but it is the making over of an old
garment after all.  Liberty may sponge and cleanse
herself a vesture, but the old stains and spots
have eaten deep into the tri-color."

"You will return then; you will not pass your
life so far away from us?"

She smiled a little wearily and said, "I think I
shall never see America again.  But I am, oh, so
thankful to have known my home!  I, who have
lived a Venetian, shall die an American."

"And yet--?"

"And yet I am glad to--do not be shocked,
kind friend, if I say that I am glad to die in my
own Venice where I was born.  I have two
selves.  One was born and nurtured here under
the shadow of the silent palaces; the other
sprang up full-grown among the madrone trees
of San Rosario.  The two have warred and
struggled *here*; their battle-ground has been
my breast, and the new self conquered the old;
but the victory will be short-lived."

Galbraith looked at her intently.  She had
spoken a little wildly, as if her mind were
clouded.  She saw his look, and with a sigh
smoothed the lines from her brow.

"I am a little mad, you think?  Yes, yes.  But
I am so happy to see you.  You understand me,
dear friend; and you understand him, a little.
You will see him again, though perhaps I never
shall.  You will tell him--No, do not look so
grieved.  It is very likely that I shall get well."

He lifted her pale hand and touched it to
his lips, as a Catholic might kiss the cross.

"You will be well and strong again, my child.
Do not speak so."

"It may be, and yet I do not wish it.  Life
looks so hard and cold and lonely.  I do not wish
to live,--and yet I am so afraid to die."  She
shivered, and Galbraith drew the gray cloak
closer about her.  "If I could only fall quietly
asleep, and wake to find this poor weak body
left behind--but you remember that poor
creature's death?  It was so terrible--I can
never forget it."

"You must not think of it.  What message
was it that you wanted to send home?"

"It was to Graham.  I can speak to you
about him and to no one else.  You must tell
him how thankful I am that I left my old home,
my old life, and came to his country.  Tell him
that he has nothing to reproach himself with;
that the only thing that has made my life worth
living has been my love for him.  Tell him to
remember me tenderly and without regret; it
should be a sweet memory without a shadow of
bitterness.  Tell him--but what am I saying?
You could never repeat it all even if you would.
Give him this; it will tell him all; it is a token
the trace of which he will find on my hand
when we meet again, if souls retain aught of
their old vesture in the twilight world."

She seemed wandering again.  From her
slim finger she slipped the little ring which
Galbraith took and kept.

"And Barbara, dear good Barbara.  She is
white with that spotless purity of a passionless
womanhood.  Do you know, Mr. Galbraith, that
dying people sometimes have a power of seeing
into the future?  Shall I tell you what face I
see beside Barbara's in the bright coming years
which I shall never know?  It is that of a brave
and loyal man,--a man whose love would make
such a woman happy and complete.  It is the
face of the friend who has brought me great
peace on this New Year's Day."

The black gondola now floated at rest under
the archway of the grim old palace.  From
beneath the sable hood Girolomo lifted the
slender frame.  The old fellow's eyes filled with
tears at the gentle words which his young
mistress whispered to him as he carried her
through the marble archway and up the long
steep stairs.

"*Tanto ricca, tanto giovine, tanto bella, e
bisogna che muore.*"  Galbraith understood the
words muttered by the old servant as he passed
him after having laid his burden at rest in the
great chair.  He understood, but he would not
believe them.  It could not be true.

It was late that night when the soft-footed
nun who was Millicent's nurse laid her patient
on her couch, with a gentle reproof for her
wilfulness in being so wakeful.

"But it was not my fault, my sister; I could not
sleep earlier.  Now I am better and shall rest."  She
smiled in the quiet face which bent over
her under its snow-white coif of linen.  The
heavy gold-bronze hair was not plaited that night,
Millicent was so tired.  The sister smoothed it
tenderly over the pillow, her hard fingers
thrilling at the touch of so much beauty.  Her own
close-shaven head had once been covered with
thick black curls, one of which slept on the
heart of the dead man for the repose of whose
soul her prayers were offered at every hour
of the day.

"My sister, sit by me.  I want to talk with
you a little while.  I know your story, blessed
one.  Let me ask you a little of your life in the
convent, among the sick.  Is it peaceful, is it
happy?  Do you feel that you are nearer to the
spirit of your dead lover than when you were
in the world?"

"My child, I may not speak of these things;
it would be a sin.  Our words we can control,
if not our thoughts."

"But, sister, I need your help.  You know
that I have not your faith, and never could
have.  But I have loved as you once loved, and
I shall never see the face of my lover.  What
shall I do with my empty life?  I am so weak!"

"All the greater need have you for a stronger
help than mine, for a haven from the ills of the
world.  I cannot think you would find that place
in our cloister.  There must be workers in the
world among the living and strong, as well as
with the sick and dying.  It is in that world
that you, my child, with your power, your wealth,
your beauty, should find your work.  The arms
of the Church are wide, and embrace the toilers
in the market-place as well as those who watch
and pray in the cloister."

"There is only work, then, that will bring peace?"

"Work and prayer, my child.  You must not
talk of this to-night; you should sleep now.
To-morrow you shall tell me more of the needs
of your soul."

"Only work!  I am so tired, I am so weak,
I cannot work alone.  If there had been one to
help me--"  She lifted her white hand, so
nerveless now, and let it sink wearily beside her.

"Bring the great candelabrum, and set it at
the foot of the bed.  Light all the candles.  I
want to drive out the shadows from the dark
corners.  Ah! hear them singing below there
in the canal."

She sat up among her pillows listening to the
chorus chanted by a band of belated merry-makers.
It was the love-song that the people
in the *sandalo* had sung that afternoon.

"*Dame un pensiero, sogna me, ed io ti sognerò.*"  "In
dreaming give a thought of me, and I will
dream of thee."

"Give me my little golden crown, sister, and
then lie down upon your couch and sleep.  You
do not mind the lights?"

Millicent was fanciful and wilful that night;
and the nun, knowing that it was best to humor
her, brought her from its velvet case the gold
fillet of olive leaves which Graham had laid on
the brow of his love in the forest of San
Rosario.  The girl set it on her head, and called
for a mirror.

"I am beautiful still, my sister, though so
pale, am I not?"

The nun nodded her head smilingly.

"Now that is all, and I shall sleep.  Good-night
to you.  Say a little prayer for me, sister,
and one for a strong, proud man who will be very
sad to-night with me so far away from him."

She folded her palms upon her breast, as they
fold the hands of the dead.  The sister stood
beside her, watching uneasily the light slumber
into which her patient had fallen.  Her pulse
was full and even, the breathing regular, and
the sleep peaceful as that of a child.

"A strange fancy to light those candles, and
to put that wreath about her head.  Poor child,
she is beautiful, indeed, as the vision of a saint,"
murmured the sister.

At last the black-robed watcher laid aside her
coif, and, lying down upon a couch near the
bedside, fell asleep.  She could not have told
how long she slept, when a sound awoke her.
The quiet of the night was broken by a sudden
gust of wind blowing through the long
apartment with a deep sigh.  It trembled among
the tresses of the sleeping girl, and stirred and
lingered in the strand of hair which overhung
the tiny ear.  It blew the flame of the candles
straight out from the wick, and fanned the
embers on the hearthstone to a last up-flaming.
It blew over the lips of the sleeper, and bore
these softly spoken words to her ear,--

"I come, I come! wait for me!"

The girl turned on her pillow, and smiled in
her sleep.  All was going well.  The nun
replenished the dying fire with fuel, and,
extinguishing the candles, lay down to sleep again
by the light of the night lamp, muttering an
Ave Maria.

.. vspace:: 2

And the breath of the west wind passed out
of the silent sick room, and went roystering
through the long suite of stately apartments,
where it met no man.  It was a strong puff of
wind, which had travelled far and sturdily across
wild seas and smiling lands.  It had raced with
man's toy of steam and iron, and laughed in
derision at the poor engine and its boasted
speed; it had swayed dim forest-trees in a
far-off land; it had ruffled a quiet ocean into
deep furrows of foam; it had breathed upon a
band of icy mountain giants, and had grown
cold at their contact; it had come sighing down
the Grand Canal, and had entered the great
palace unceremoniously; it had fanned the cheek
of a sleeping woman beautiful as the vision of a
saint; it had whispered in her ear its message.
And now, at the doorway of that great palace,
the bold wind ceased its blustering, and died
away into the still air of the ante-chamber,
getting behind the heavy arras, and imparting a
trembling motion to the faded figures of
warrior and horse.  A dim, gray Presence had
entered the palace, before which the merry west
wind had grown quiet.  The hush of deepest
night was on all the sleeping house, and the
tide of the Adriatic was at the ebb.  Silently
the Presence crept toward the sick-room, and,
as it crossed the threshold, the spark of the
night light flickered and went out, while the
nun crossed herself as she slept.

.. vspace:: 2

When Maurice Galbraith called at the Palazzo
Fortunio early on the morning after he had seen
Millicent, to inquire how she had passed the
night, he found the porter's room empty.  He
rang at the door of the apartment, which was
opened, after some delay, by a weeping woman.
He could not understand what she said to him,
and made his way to the boudoir where he had
last seen Millicent, without meeting any one.
He heard voices in the next room, which he
knew to be her sleeping apartment.

"It must have been quite painless," he heard
a strange voice say in English.  "See! she has
not moved; the clothes are quite unruffled.  It
is doubtful if she woke at all.  Sister Theresa
says she was in this attitude when she last saw
her.  If she had even breathed heavily the nun
would have heard her, she sleeps so lightly."

A chill fell upon the young man's heart.  What
could those strange words mean?  The door
opened at last, and two men entered the room,
the younger carefully closing it behind him.  He
was evidently a physician.  The elder man passed
him with bowed head and clasped hands.  Galbraith
touched the younger man on the arm, and
asked him what his words had meant.  The
doctor waited till the father had left the room, and,
turning to the stranger, answered him gently and
compassionately; told him the little there was to
tell beyond the great fact that Death had entered
in the night and stolen the breath of the fairest,
while she slept.

"If I could but fall quietly asleep!" he
remembered her words of yester eve.  Her prayer had
been answered.  The grim visage of Death had
been hidden by the tender veil of sleep.

The physician was very patient with the
stranger who asked him so often if it were
certain, if there could be no mistake regarding
the dreadful event.  At last, when he was
satisfied that there was no hope, he turned to go,
stumbling over a chair as he went.  The doctor
made him take a glass of wine, and bade him
rest awhile before going out.  Maurice Galbraith
was a strong man, and after the first faintness
which the news had brought him, he nerved
himself to meet the terrible grief, and bear it as a
strong man should.

"You are Mr. Galbraith, from California, of
whom she spoke last night?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you could help me in a little matter
which Mr. Almsford has asked me to attend to.
This telegram came an hour ago.  It was directed
to her, and is dated California.  Do you know
the sender, and the meaning of the message?"

Galbraith took the slip of blue paper, and read
these words:--

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   "I am coming to you.  I start to-night.

.. class:: small noindent

   "GRAHAM."

.. vspace:: 2

"You know the person?"

"Yes, very well."

"As we have not his address, would you kindly
answer the despatch and tell him?"

"Surely."

"It would be a great favor."

"It is the last but one that I can ever do for
her now."

He found his way to the telegraph office, he
never knew how, and with trembling hand penned
this message, which should fly swifter than west
wind or shifting water, to John Graham on the
far golden shore, where the tide was at the flood,
and the earth glad and green in the promise of
the new-born year:--

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   "*Millicent died last night.*"

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: small center

   University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large white-space-pre-line

   CHOICE FICTION
   FOR
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.. pgfooter::