THE SAN ROSARIO RANCH




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Title: The San Rosario Ranch
Author: Maud Howe
Release Date: March 09, 2013 [EBook #42283]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Cover]




                                  THE

                           SAN ROSARIO RANCH


                                   BY
                               MAUD HOWE



                                 BOSTON
                            ROBERTS BROTHERS
                                  1884




                           _Copyright, 1884_,
                          BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.



                           University Press:
                    JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.




                                   TO
                           My Beloved Sister,
                           LAURA E. RICHARDS.




                           SAN ROSARIO RANCH.



                               CHAPTER I.

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


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.


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.




                              CHAPTER II.

    "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."


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:--


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,

JOHN GRAHAM.


"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.




                              CHAPTER III.

    "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."


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.




                              CHAPTER IV.

    "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."


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.




                               CHAPTER V.

    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.


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.




                              CHAPTER VI.

    "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?"


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.




                              CHAPTER VII.

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


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.


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!


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"?




                             CHAPTER VIII.

    "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."


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.




                              CHAPTER IX.

    "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."


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.




                               CHAPTER X.

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


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.




                              CHAPTER XI.

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


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.




                              CHAPTER XII.

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


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?




                             CHAPTER XIII.

    "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."


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.




                              CHAPTER XIV.

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


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.




                              CHAPTER XV.

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


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:--


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.

MILLICENT.


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.




                              CHAPTER XVI.

      "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."


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.




                             CHAPTER XVII.

    "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."


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.




                             CHAPTER XVIII.

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


"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?




                              CHAPTER XIX.

    "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!"


"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.


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.




                              CHAPTER XX.

    "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."


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.


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.


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:--


"I am coming to you.  I start to-night.

"GRAHAM."


"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:--


                     "_Millicent died last night._"




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