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+Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte
+#36 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Title:  Jeff Briggs's Love Story
+
+Author:  Bret Harte
+
+July, 2001  [Etext #2695]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte
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+
+JEFF BRIGGS'S LOVE STORY
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+JEFF BRIGGS'S LOVE STORY.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+It was raining and blowing at Eldridge's Crossing.  From the 
+stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly 
+protesting through their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical 
+willows in the hollow, that had whipped themselves into a maudlin 
+fury, there was a general tumult.  When the wind lulled, the rain 
+kept up the distraction, firing long volleys across the road, 
+letting loose miniature cataracts from the hill-sides to brawl in 
+the ditches, and beating down the heavy heads of wild oats on the 
+levels; when the rain ceased for a moment the wind charged over the 
+already defeated field, ruffled the gullies, scattered the spray 
+from the roadside pines, and added insult to injury.  But both wind 
+and rain concentrated their energies in a malevolent attempt to 
+utterly disperse and scatter the "Half-way House," which seemed to 
+have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed 
+and bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the 
+taunting fury of the blast.  A loose, shambling, disjointed, 
+hastily built structure--representing the worst features of Pioneer 
+renaissance--it rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering 
+teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of the 
+invading storm, that it might have blown up or blown down with 
+equal facility.
+
+Jefferson Briggs, proprietor and landlord of the "Half-way House," 
+had just gone through the formality of closing his house for the 
+night, hanging dangerously out of the window in the vain attempt to 
+subdue a rebellious shutter that had evidently entered into 
+conspiracy with the invaders, and, shutting a door as against a 
+sheriff's posse, was going to bed--i. e., to read himself asleep, 
+as was his custom.  As he entered his little bedroom in the attic 
+with a highly exciting novel in his pocket and a kerosene lamp in 
+his hand, the wind, lying in wait for him, instantly extinguished 
+his lamp and slammed the door behind him.  Jefferson Briggs 
+relighted the lamp, as if confidentially, in a corner, and, 
+shielding it in the bosom of his red flannel shirt, which gave him 
+the appearance of an illuminated shrine, hung a heavy bear-skin 
+across the window, and then carefully deposited his lamp upon a 
+chair at his bedside.  This done, he kicked off his boots, flung 
+them into a corner, and, rolling himself in a blanket, lay down 
+upon the bed.  A habit of early rising, bringing with it, 
+presumably, the proverbial accompaniment of health, wisdom, and 
+pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it certain ideas of the 
+effeminacy of separate toilettes and the virtue of readiness.
+
+In a few moments he was deep in a chapter.
+
+A vague pecking at his door--as of an unseasonable woodpecker, 
+finally asserted itself to his consciousness.  "Come in," he said, 
+with his eye still on the page.
+
+The door opened to a gaunt figure, partly composed of bed-quilt and 
+partly of plaid shawl.  A predominance of the latter and a long 
+wisp of iron-gray hair determined her sex.  She leaned against the 
+post with an air of fatigue, half moral and half physical.
+
+"How ye kin lie thar, abed, Jeff, and read and smoke on sich a 
+night!  The sperrit o' the Lord abroad over the yearth--and up 
+stage not gone by yet.  Well, well! it's well thar ez SOME EZ CAN'T 
+SLEEP."
+
+"The up coach, like as not, is stopped by high water on the North 
+Fork, ten miles away, aunty," responded Jeff, keeping to the facts.  
+Possibly not recognizing the hand of the beneficent Creator in the 
+rebellious window shutter, he avoided theology.
+
+"Well," responded the figure, with an air of delivering an unheeded 
+and thankless warning, "it is not for ME to say.  P'raps it's all 
+His wisdom that some will keep to their own mind.  It's well ez 
+some hezn't narves, and kin luxuriate in terbacker in the night 
+watches.  But He says, 'I'll come like a thief in the night!'--like 
+a thief in the night, Jeff."
+
+Totally unable to reconcile this illustration with the delayed 
+"Pioneer" coach and Yuba Bill, its driver, Jeff lay silent.  In his 
+own way, perhaps, he was uneasy--not to say shocked--at his aunt's 
+habitual freedom of scriptural quotation, as that good lady herself 
+was with an occasional oath from his lips; a fact, by the way, not 
+generally understood by purveyors of Scripture, licensed and 
+unlicensed.
+
+"I'd take a pull at them bitters, aunty," said Jeff feebly, with 
+his wandering eye still recurring to his page.  "They'll do ye a 
+power of good in the way o' calmin' yer narves."
+
+"Ef I was like some folks I wouldn't want bitters--though made 
+outer the simplest yarbs of the yearth, with jest enough sperrit to 
+bring out the vartoos--ez Deacon Stoer's Balm 'er Gilead is--what 
+yer meaning?  Ef I was like some folks I could lie thar and smoke 
+in the lap o' idleness--with fourteen beds in the house empty, and 
+nary lodger for one of 'em.  Ef I was that indifferent to havin' 
+invested my fortin in the good will o' this house, and not ez much 
+ez a single transient lookin' in, I could lie down and take comfort 
+in profane literatoor.  But it ain't in me to do it.  And it wasn't 
+your father's way, Jeff, neither!"
+
+As the elder Briggs's way had been to seek surcease from such 
+trouble at the gambling table, and eventually, in suicide, Jeff 
+could not deny it.  But he did not say that a full realization of 
+his unhappy venture overcame him as he closed the blinds of the 
+hotel that night; and that the half desperate idea of abandoning it 
+then and there to the warring elements that had resented his 
+trespass on Nature seemed to him an act of simple reason and 
+justice.  He did not say this, for easy-going natures are not apt 
+to explain the processes by which their content or resignation is 
+reached, and are therefore supposed to have none.  Keeping to the 
+facts, he simply suggested the weather was unfavorable to 
+travelers, and again found his place on the page before him.  
+Fixing it with his thumb, he looked up resignedly.  The figure 
+wearily detached itself from the door-post, and Jeff's eyes fell on 
+his book.  "You won't stop, aunty?" he asked mechanically, as if 
+reading aloud from the page; but she was gone.
+
+A little ashamed, although much relieved, Jeff fell back again to 
+literature, interrupted only by the charging of the wind and the 
+heavy volleys of rain.  Presently he found himself wondering if a 
+certain banging were really a shutter, and then, having settled in 
+his mind that it WAS, he was startled by a shout.  Another, and in 
+the road before the house!
+
+Jeff put down the book, and marked the place by turning down the 
+leaf, being one of that large class of readers whose mental 
+faculties are butter-fingered, and easily slip their hold.  Then he 
+resumed his boots and was duly caparisoned.  He extinguished the 
+kerosene lamp, and braved the outer air, and strong currents of the 
+hall and stairway in the darkness.  Lighting two candles in the 
+bar-room, he proceeded to unlock the hall door.  At the same 
+instant a furious blast shook the house, the door yielded slightly 
+and impelled a thin, meek-looking stranger violently against Jeff, 
+who still struggled with it.
+
+"An accident has occurred," began the stranger, "and"--but here the 
+wind charged again, blew open the door, pinned Jeff behind it back 
+against the wall, overturned the dripping stranger, dashed up the 
+staircase, and slammed every door in the house, ending triumphantly 
+with No. 14, and a crash of glass in the window.
+
+"'Come, rouse up!" said Jeff, still struggling with the door, 
+"rouse up and lend a hand yer!"
+
+Thus abjured, the stranger crept along the wall towards Jeff and 
+began again, "We have met with an accident."  But here another and 
+mightier gust left him speechless, covered him with spray of a 
+wildly disorganized water-spout that, dangling from the roof, 
+seemed to be playing on the front door, drove him into black 
+obscurity and again sandwiched his host between the door and the 
+wall.  Then there was a lull, and in the midst of it Yuba Bill, 
+driver of the "Pioneer" coach, quietly and coolly, impervious in 
+waterproof, walked into the hall, entered the bar-room, took a 
+candle, and, going behind the bar, selected a bottle, critically 
+examined it, and, returning, poured out a quantity of whiskey in a 
+glass and gulped it in a single draught.
+
+All this while Jeff was closing the door, and the meek-looking man 
+was coming into the light again.
+
+Yuba Bill squared his elbows behind him and rested them on the bar, 
+crossed his legs easily and awaited them.  In reply to Jeff's 
+inquiring but respectful look, he said shortly--
+
+"Oh, you're thar, are ye?"
+
+"Yes, Bill."
+
+"Well, this yer new-fangled road o' yours is ten feet deep in the 
+hollow with back water from the North Fork!  I've taken that yar 
+coach inter fower feet of it, and then I reckoned I couldn't hev 
+any more.  'I'll stand on this yer hand,' sez I; I brought the 
+horses up yer and landed 'em in your barn to eat their blessed 
+heads off till the water goes down.  That's wot's the matter, old 
+man, and jist about wot I kalkilated on from those durned old 
+improvements o' yours."
+
+Coloring a little at this new count in the general indictment 
+against the uselessness of the "Half-way House," Jeff asked if 
+there were "any passengers?"
+
+Yuba Bill indicated the meek stranger with a jerk of his thumb.  
+"And his wife and darter in the coach.  They're all right and 
+tight, ez if they was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  But I reckon he 
+allows to fetch 'em up yer," added Bill, as if he strongly doubted 
+the wisdom of the transfer.
+
+The meek man, much meeker for the presence of Bill, here suggested 
+that such indeed was his wish, and further prayed that Jeff would 
+accompany him to the coach to assist in bringing them up.  "It's 
+rather wet and dark," said the man apologetically; "my daughter is 
+not strong.  Have you such a thing as a waterproof?"
+
+Jeff had not; but would a bear-skin do?
+
+It would.
+
+Jeff ran, tore down his extempore window curtain, and returned with 
+it.  Yuba Bill, who had quietly and disapprovingly surveyed the 
+proceeding, here disengaged himself from the bar with evident 
+reluctance.
+
+"You'll want another man," he said to Jeff, "onless ye can carry 
+double.  Ez HE," indicating the stranger, "ez no sort o' use, he'd 
+better stay here and 'tend bar,' while you and me fetch the wimmen 
+off.  'Specially ez I reckon we've got to do some tall wadin' by 
+this time to reach 'em."
+
+The meek man sat down helplessly in a chair indicated by Bill, who 
+at once strode after Jeff.  In another moment they were both 
+fighting their way, step by step, against the storm, in that 
+peculiar, drunken, spasmodic way so amusing to the spectator and so 
+exasperating to the performer.  It was no time for conversation, 
+even interjectional profanity was dangerously exhaustive.
+
+The coach was scarcely a thousand yards away, but its bright lights 
+were reflected in a sheet of dark silent water that stretched 
+between it and the two men.  Wading and splashing, they soon 
+reached it, and a gully where the surplus water was pouring into 
+the valley below.  "Fower feet o' water round her, but can't get 
+any higher.  So ye see she's all right for a month o' sich 
+weather."  Inwardly admiring the perspicacity of his companion, 
+Jeff was about to open the coach door when Bill interrupted.
+
+"I'll pack the old woman, if you'll look arter the darter and enny 
+little traps."
+
+A female face, anxious and elderly, here appeared at the window.
+
+"Thet's my little game," said Bill, sotto voce.
+
+"Is there any danger? where is my husband?" asked the woman 
+impatiently.
+
+"Ez to the danger, ma'am,--thar ain't any.  Yer ez safe HERE ez 
+ye'd be in a Sacramento steamer; ez to your husband, he allowed I 
+was to come yer and fetch yer up to the hotel.  That's his look-
+out!"  With this cheering speech, Bill proceeded to make two or 
+three ineffectual scoops into the dark interior, manifestly with 
+the idea of scooping out the lady in question.  In another instant 
+he had caught her, lifted her gently but firmly in his arms, and 
+was turning away.
+
+"But my child!--my daughter! she's asleep!"--expostulated the 
+woman; but Bill was already swiftly splashing through the darkness.  
+Jeff, left to himself, hastily examined the coach: on the back seat 
+a slight small figure, enveloped in a shawl, lay motionless.  Jeff 
+threw the bear-skin over it gently, lifted it on one arm, and 
+gathering a few travelling bags and baskets with the other, 
+prepared to follow his quickly disappearing leader.  A few feet 
+from the coach the water appeared to deepen, and the bear-skin to 
+draggle.  Jeff drew the figure up higher, in vain.
+
+"Sis," he said softly.
+
+No reply.
+
+"Sis," shaking her gently.
+
+There was a slight movement within the wrappings.
+
+"Couldn't ye climb up on my shoulder, honey? that's a good child!"
+
+There were one or two spasmodic jerks of the bear-skin, and, aided 
+by Jeff, the bundle was presently seated on his shoulder.
+
+"Are you all right now, Sis?"
+
+Something like a laugh came from the bear-skin.  Then a childish 
+voice said, "Thank you, I think I am!"
+
+"Ain't you afraid you'll fall off?"
+
+"A little."
+
+Jeff hesitated.  It was beginning to blow again.
+
+"You couldn't reach down and put your arm round my neck, could ye, 
+honey?"
+
+"I am afraid not!"--although there WAS a slight attempt to do so.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, then, take a good holt, a firm strong holt, o' my hair!  
+Don't be afraid!"
+
+A small hand timidly began to rummage in Jeff's thick curls.
+
+"Take a firm holt; thar, just back o' my neck!  That's right."
+
+The little hand closed over half a dozen curls.  The little figure 
+shook, and giggled.
+
+"Now don't you see, honey, if I'm keerless with you, and don't keep 
+you plump level up thar, you jist give me a pull and fetch me up 
+all standing!"
+
+"I see!"
+
+"Of course you do!  That's because you're a little lady!"
+
+Jeff strode on.  It was pleasant to feel the soft warm fingers in 
+his hair, pleasant to hear the faint childish voice, pleasant to 
+draw the feet of the enwrapped figure against his broad breast.  
+Altogether he was sorry when they reached the dry land and the lee 
+of the "Half-way House," where a slight movement of the figure 
+expressed a wish to dismount.
+
+"Not yet, missy," said Jeff; "not yet!  You'll get blown away, 
+sure!  And then what'll they say?  No, honey!  I'll take you right 
+in to your papa, just as ye are!"
+
+A few steps more and Jeff strode into the hall, made his way to the 
+sitting-room, walked to the sofa, and deposited his burden.  The 
+bear-skin fell back, the shawl fell back, and Jeff--fell back too!  
+For before him lay a small, slight, but beautiful and perfectly 
+formed woman.
+
+He had time to see that the meek man, no longer meek, but 
+apparently a stern uncompromising parent, was standing at the head 
+of the sofa; that the elderly and nervous female was hovering at 
+the foot, that his aunt, with every symptom of religious and moral 
+disapproval of his conduct, sat rigidly in one of the rigid chairs--
+he had time to see all this before the quick, hot blood, flying to 
+his face, sent the water into his eyes, and he could see nothing!
+
+The cause of all this smiled--a dazzling smile though a faint one--
+that momentarily lit up the austere gloom of the room and its 
+occupants.  "You must thank this gentleman, papa," said she, 
+languidly turning to her father, "for his kindness and his trouble.  
+He has carried me here as gently and as carefully as if I were a 
+child."  Seeing symptoms of a return of Jeff's distress in his 
+coloring face, she added softly, as if to herself, "It's a great 
+thing to be strong--a greater thing to be strong AND gentle."
+
+The voice thrilled through Jeff.  But into this dangerous human 
+voice twanged the accents of special spiritual revelation, and 
+called him to himself again, "Be ye wise as sarpints, but harmless 
+as duvs," said Jeff's aunt, generally, "and let 'em be thankful ez 
+doesn't aboos the stren'th the Lord gives 'em, but be allers ready 
+to answer for it at the bar o' their Maker."  Possibly some 
+suggestion in her figure of speech reminded her of Jeff's forgotten 
+duties, so she added in the same breath and tone, "especially when 
+transient customers is waiting for their licker, and Yuba Bill 
+hammerin' on the counter with his glass; and yer ye stand, Jeff, 
+never even takin' up that wet bar-skin--enuff to give that young 
+woman her death."
+
+Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the 
+occupants of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on 
+the sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door.  Then 
+he flew to his room with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but 
+the impatient William of Yuba had characteristically helped himself 
+and gone off to the stable.  Then Jeff stole into the hall and 
+halted before the closed door of the sitting-room.  A bold idea of 
+going in again, as became a landlord of the "Half-way House," with 
+an inquiry if they wished anything further, had seized him, but the 
+remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that duty to devolve 
+upon his aunt, and that she would probably resent it with 
+scriptural authority and bring him to shame again, stayed his timid 
+knuckles at the door.  In this hesitation he stumbled upon his aunt 
+coming down the stairs with an armful of blankets and pillows, 
+attended by their small Indian servant, staggering under a mattress.
+
+"Is everything all right, aunty?"
+
+"Ye kin be thankful to the Lord, Jeff Briggs, that this didn't 
+happen last week when I was down on my back with rheumatiz.  But 
+ye're never grateful."
+
+"The young lady--is SHE comfortable?" said Jeff, accepting his 
+aunt's previous remark as confirmatory.
+
+"Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the Lord with 
+gallopin' consumption kin be, I reckon.  And she, ez oughter be 
+putting off airthly vanities, askin' for a lookin'-glass!  And you! 
+trapesin' through the hall with her on yer shoulder, and dancin' 
+and jouncin' her up and down ez if it was a ball-room!"  A guilty 
+recollection that he had skipped with her through the passage 
+struck him with remorse as his aunt went on: "It's a mercy that 
+betwixt you and the wet bar-skin she ain't got her deth!"
+
+"Don't ye think, aunty," stammered Jeff, "that--that--my bein' the 
+landlord, yer know, it would be the square thing--just out o' 
+respect, ye know--for me to drop in thar and ask 'em if thar's 
+anythin' they wanted?"
+
+His aunt stopped, and resignedly put down the pillows.  "Sarah," 
+she said meekly to the handmaiden, "ye kin leave go that mattress.  
+Yer's Mr. Jefferson thinks we ain't good enough to make the beds 
+for them two city women folks, and he allows he'll do it himself!"
+
+"No, no! aunty!" began the horrified Jeff; but failing to placate 
+his injured relative, took safety in flight.
+
+Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-skin.  It 
+certainly WAS wet.  Perhaps he had been careless--perhaps he had 
+imperiled her life!  His cheeks flushed as he threw it hastily in 
+the corner.  Something fell from it to the floor.  Jeff picked it 
+up and held it to the light.  It was a small, a very small, lady's 
+slipper.  Holding it within the palm of his hand as if it had been 
+some delicate flower which the pressure of a finger might crush, he 
+strode to the door, but stopped.  Should he give it to his aunt?  
+Even if she overlooked this evident proof of HIS carelessness, what 
+would she think of the young lady's?  Ought he--seductive thought!--
+go downstairs again, knock at the door, and give it to its fair 
+owner, with the apology he was longing to make?  Then he remembered 
+that he had but a few moments before been dismissed from the room 
+very much as if he were the original proprietor of the skin he had 
+taken.  Perhaps they were right; perhaps he WAS only a foolish 
+clumsy animal!  Yet SHE had thanked him--and had said in her sweet 
+childlike voice, "It is a great thing to be strong; a greater thing 
+to be strong and gentle."  He was strong; strong men had said so.  
+He did not know if he was gentle too.  Had she meant THAT, when she 
+turned her strangely soft dark eyes upon him?  For some moments he 
+held the slipper hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened his 
+trunk, and disposing various articles around it as if it were some 
+fragile, perishable object, laid it carefully therein.
+
+This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself in his 
+blanket, lay down upon the bed.  He did not open his novel--he did 
+not follow up the exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so 
+ungrateful is humanity to us poor romancers, in the first stages of 
+their real passion.  Ah, me! 'tis the jongleurs and troubadours 
+they want then, not us!  When Master Slender, sick for sweet Anne 
+Page, would "rather than forty shillings" he had his "book of songs 
+and sonnets" there, what availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had 
+contemporaneously discoursed wisely and sweetly of love in prose?  
+I doubt not that Master Jeff would have mumbled some verse to 
+himself had he known any: knowing none, he lay there and listened 
+to the wind.
+
+Did she hear it; did it keep her awake?  He had an uneasy suspicion 
+that the shutter that was banging so outrageously was the shutter 
+of her room.  Filled with this miserable thought, he arose softly, 
+stole down the staircase, and listened.  The sound was repeated.  
+It was truly the refractory shutter of No. 7--the best bedroom 
+adjoining the sitting-room.  The next room, No. 8, was vacant.  
+Jeff entered it softly, as softly opened the window, and leaning 
+far out in the tempest, essayed to secure the nocturnal disturber.  
+But in vain.  Cord or rope he had none, nor could he procure either 
+without alarming his aunt--an extremity not to be considered.  Jeff 
+was a man of clumsy but forceful expedients.  He hung far out of 
+the window, and with one powerful hand lifted the shutter off its 
+hinges and dragged it softly into No. 8.  Then as softly he crept 
+upstairs to bed.  The wind howled and tore round the house; the 
+crazy water-pipe below Jeff's window creaked, the chimneys 
+whistled, but the shutter banged no more.  Jeff began to doze.  
+"It's a great thing to be strong," the wind seemed to say as it 
+charged upon the defenseless house, and then another voice seemed 
+to reply, "A greater thing to be strong and gentle;" and hearing 
+this he fell asleep.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+It was not yet daylight when he awoke with an idea that brought him 
+hurriedly to his feet.  Quickly dressing himself, he began to count 
+the money in his pocket.  Apparently the total was not satisfactory,
+as he endeavored to augment it by loose coins fished from the
+pockets of his other garments, and from the corner of his washstand
+drawer.  Then he cautiously crept downstairs, seized his gun, and
+stole out of the still sleeping house.  The wind had gone down, the
+rain had ceased, a few stars shone steadily in the north, and the
+shapeless bulk of the coach, its lamps extinguished, loomed high and
+dry above the lessening water, in the twilight.  With a swinging
+tread Jeff strode up the hill and was soon upon the highway and
+stage road.  A half-hour's brisk walk brought him to the summit, and
+the first rosy flashes of morning light.  This enabled him to knock
+over half-a-dozen early quail, lured by the proverb, who were
+seeking their breakfast in the chaparral, and gave him courage to
+continue on his mission, which his perplexed face and irresolute
+manner had for the last few moments shown to be an embarrassing one.
+At last the white fences and imposing outbuildings of the "Summit
+Hotel" rose before him, and he uttered a deep sigh.  There, basking
+in the first rays of the morning sun, stood his successful rival!
+Jeff looked at the well-built, comfortable structure, the commanding
+site, and the air of serene independence that seemed to possess it,
+and no longer wondered that the great world passed him by to linger
+and refresh itself there.
+
+He was relieved to find the landlord was not present in person, and 
+so confided his business to the bar-keeper.  At first it appeared 
+that that functionary declined interference, and with many head-
+shakings and audible misgivings was inclined to await the coming of 
+his principal, but a nearer view of Jeff's perplexed face, and an 
+examination of Jeff's gun, and the few coins spread before him, 
+finally induced him to produce certain articles, which he packed in 
+a basket and handed to Jeff, taking the gun and coins in exchange.  
+Thus relieved, Jeff set his face homewards, and ran a race with the 
+morning into the valley, reaching the "Half-way House" as the sun 
+laid waste its bare, bleak outlines, and relentlessly pointed out 
+its defects one by one.  It was cruel to Jeff at that moment, but 
+he hugged his basket close and slipped to the back door and the 
+kitchen, where his aunt was already at work.
+
+"I didn't know ye were up yet, aunty," said Jeff submissively.  "It 
+isn't more than six o'clock."
+
+"Thar's four more to feed at breakfast," said his aunt severely, 
+"and yer's the top blown off the kitchen chimbly, and the fire only 
+just got to go."
+
+Jeff saw that he was in time.  The ordinary breakfast of the "Half-
+way House," not yet prepared, consisted of codfish, ham, yellow-
+ochre biscuit, made after a peculiar receipt of his aunt's, and 
+potatoes.
+
+"I got a few fancy fixin's up at the Summit this morning, aunty," 
+he began apologetically, "seein' we had sick folks, you know--you 
+and the young lady--and thinkin' it might save you trouble.  I've 
+got 'em here," and he shyly produced the basket.
+
+"If ye kin afford it, Jeff," responded his aunt resignedly, "I'm 
+thankful."
+
+The reply was so unexpectedly mild for Aunt Sally, that Jeff put 
+his arms around her and kissed her hard cheek.  "And I've got some 
+quail, aunty, knowin' you liked em."
+
+"I reckoned you was up to some such foolishness," said Aunt Sally,
+wiping her cheek with her apron," when I missed yer gun from the
+hall."  But the allusion was a dangerous one, and Jeff slipped away.
+
+He breakfasted early with Yuba Bill that morning; the latter
+gentleman's taciturnity being intensified at such moments through a
+long habit of confining himself strictly to eating in the limited
+time allowed his daily repasts, and it was not until they had taken
+the horses from the stable and were harnessing them to the coach that
+Jeff extracted from his companion some facts about his guests.  They
+were Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield, Eastern tourists, who had been to the
+Sandwich Islands for the benefit of their daughter's health, and
+before returning to New York, intended, under the advice of their
+physician, to further try the effects of mountain air at the "Summit
+Hotel," on the invalid.  They were apparently rich people, the coach
+had been engaged for them solely--even the mail and express had been
+sent on by a separate conveyance, so that they might be more
+independent.  It is hardly necessary to say that this fact was by no
+means palatable to Bill--debarring him not only the social contact
+and attentions of the "Express Agent," but the selection of a box-
+seated passenger who always "acted like a man."
+
+"Ye kin kalkilate what kind of a pardner that 'ar yaller-livered
+Mayfield would make up on that box, partik'ly ez I heard before we
+started that he'd requested the kimpany's agent in Sacramento to
+select a driver ez didn't cuss, smoke, or drink.  He did, sir, by
+gum!"
+
+"I reckon you were very careful, then, Bill," said Jeff.
+
+"In course," returned Bill, with a perfectly diabolical wink.  "In
+course!  You know that 'Blue Grass,'" pointing out a spirited leader;
+"she's a fair horse ez horses go, but she's apt to feel her oats on a
+down grade, and takes a pow'ful deal o' soothin' and explanation
+afore she buckles down to her reg'lar work.  Well, sir, I exhorted
+and labored in a Christian-like way with that mare to that extent
+that I'm cussed if that chap didn't want to get down afore we got to
+the level!"
+
+"And the ladies?" asked Jeff, whose laugh--possibly from his
+morning's experience--was not as ready as formerly.
+
+"The ladies!  Ef you mean that 'ar livin' skellington I packed up to
+yer house," said Bill promptly, "it's a pair of them in size and
+color, and ready for any first-class undertaker's team in the kintry. 
+Why, you remember that curve on Break Neck hill, where the leaders
+allus look as if they was alongside o' the coach and faced the other
+way?  Well, that woman sticks her skull outer the window, and sez
+she, confidential-like to old yaller-belly, sez she, 'William Henry,'
+sez she, 'tell that man his horses are running away!'"
+
+"You didn't get to see the--the--daughter, Bill, did you?" asked
+Jeff, whose laugh had become quite uneasy.
+
+"No, I didn't," said Bill, with sudden and inexplicable vehemence,
+"and the less you see of her, Jefferson Briggs, the better for you."
+
+Too confounded and confused by Bill's manner to question further,
+Jeff remained silent until they drew up at the door of the "Half-way
+House."  But here another surprise awaited him.  Mr. Mayfield, erect
+and dignified, stood upon the front porch as the coach drove up.
+
+"Driver!" began Mr. Mayfield.
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"Driver," said Mr. Mayfield, slightly weakening under Bill's eye, "I
+shall want you no longer.  I have"--
+ 
+"Is he speaking to me?" said Bill audibly to Jeff, "'cause they call
+me 'Yuba Bill' yer abouts."
+
+"He is," said Jeff hastily.
+
+"Mebbee he's drunk," said Bill audibly; "a drop or two afore
+breakfast sometimes upsets his kind."
+
+"I was saying, Bill," said Mr. Mayfield, becoming utterly limp and
+weak again under Bill's cold gray eyes, "that I've changed my mind,
+and shall stop here awhile.  My daughter seems already benefited by
+the change.  You can take my traps from the boot and leave them
+here."
+
+Bill laid down his lines resignedly, coolly surveyed Mr. Mayfield,
+the house, and the half-pleased, half-frightened Jeff, and then
+proceeded to remove the luggage from the boot, all the while
+whistling loud and offensive incredulity.  Then he climbed back to
+his box.  Mr. Mayfield, completely demoralized under this treatment,
+as a last resort essayed patronage.
+
+"You can say to the Sacramento agents, Bill, that I am entirely
+satisfied, and"--
+ 
+"Ye needn't fear but I'll give ye a good character," interrupted Bill
+coolly, gathering up his lines.  The whip snapped, the six horses
+dashed forward as one, the coach plunged down the road and was gone.
+
+With its disappearance, Mr. Mayfield stiffened slightly again.  "I
+have just told your aunt, Mr. Briggs," he said, turning upon Jeff, 
+"that my daughter has expressed a desire to remain here a few days;
+she has slept well, seems to be invigorated by the air, and although
+we expected to go on to the 'Summit,' Mrs. Mayfield and myself are
+willing to accede to her wishes.  Your house seems to be new and
+clean.  Your table--judging from the breakfast this morning--is quite
+satisfactory."
+
+Jeff, in the first flush of delight at this news, forgot what that
+breakfast had cost him--forgot all his morning's experience, and, I
+fear, when he did remember it, was too full of a vague, hopeful
+courage to appreciate it.  Conscious of showing too much pleasure, he
+affected the necessity of an immediate interview with his aunt, in
+the kitchen.  But his short cut round the house was arrested by a
+voice and figure.  It was Miss Mayfield, wrapped in a shawl and
+seated in a chair, basking in the sunlight at one of the bleakest and
+barest angles of the house.  Jeff stopped in a delicious tremor.
+
+As we are dealing with facts, however, it would be well to look at
+the cause of this tremor with our own eyes and not Jeff's.  To be
+plain, my dear madam, as she basked in that remorseless, matter-of-
+fact California sunshine, she looked her full age-twenty-five, if a
+day!  There were wrinkles in the corners of her dark eyes, contracted
+and frowning in that strong, merciless light; there was a nervous
+pallor in her complexion; but being one of those "fast colored"
+brunettes, whose dyes are a part of their temperament, no sickness
+nor wear could bleach it out.  The red of her small mouth was darker
+than yours, I wot, and there were certain faint lines from the
+corners of her delicate nostrils indicating alternate repression and
+excitement under certain experiences, which are not found in the
+classic ideals.  Now Jeff knew nothing of the classic ideal--did not
+know that a thousand years ago certain sensual idiots had, with brush
+and chisel, inflicted upon the world the personification of the
+strongest and most delicate, most controlling and most subtle passion
+that humanity is capable of, in the likeness of a thick-waisted,
+idealess, expressionless, perfectly contented female animal; and that
+thousands of idiots had since then insisted upon perpetuating this
+model for the benefit of a world that had gone on sighing for, pining
+for, fighting for, and occasionally blowing its brains out over types
+far removed from that idiotic standard.
+
+Consequently Jeff saw only a face full of possibilities and
+probabilities, framed in a small delicate oval, saw a slight woman's
+form--more than usually small--and heard a low voice, to him full of
+gentle pride, passion, pathos, and human weakness, and was helpless.
+
+"I only said 'Good-morning,'" said Miss Mayfield, with that slight,
+arch satisfaction in the observation of masculine bashfulness, which
+the best of her sex cannot forego.
+
+"Thank you, miss; good-morning.  I've been wanting to say to you that
+I hope you wasn't mad, you know," stammered Jeff, desperately intent
+upon getting off his apology.
+
+"It is so lovely this morning--such a change!" continued Miss
+Mayfield.
+
+"Yes, miss!  You know I reckoned--at least what your father said, made
+me kalkilate that you"--
+
+Miss Mayfield, still smiling, knitted her brows and went on: "I slept
+so well last night," she said gratefully, "and feel so much better
+this morning, that I ventured out.  I seem to be drinking in health
+in this clear sunlight."
+
+"Certainly miss.  As I was sayin', your father says his daughter is
+in the coach; and Bill says, says he to me, 'I'll pack--I'll carry
+the old--I'll bring up Mrs. Mayfield, if you'll bring up the
+daughter;' and when we come to the coach I saw you asleep--like in
+the corner, and bein' small, why miss, you know how nat'ral it is,
+I"--
+ 
+"Oh, Mr. Jeff!  Mr. Briggs!" said Miss Mayfield plaintively, "don't,
+please--don't spoil the best compliment I've had in many a year.  You
+thought I was a child, I know, and--well, you find," she said
+audaciously, suddenly bringing her black eyes to bear on him like a
+rifle, "you find--well?"
+
+What Jeff thought was inaudible but not invisible.  Miss Mayfield saw
+enough of it in his eye to protest with a faint color in her cheek. 
+Thus does Nature betray itself to Nature the world over.
+
+The color faded.  "It's a dreadful thing to be so weak and helpless,
+and to put everybody to such trouble, isn't it, Mr. Jeff?  I beg
+your pardon--your aunt calls you Jeff."
+
+"Please call me Jeff," said Jeff, to his own surprise rapidly gaining
+courage.  "Everybody calls me that."
+
+Miss Mayfield smiled.  "I suppose I must do what everybody does.  So
+it seems that we are to give you the trouble of keeping us here until
+I get better or worse?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"Therefore I won't detain you now.  I only wanted to thank you for
+your gentleness last night, and to assure you that the bear-skin did
+not give me my death."
+
+She smiled and nodded her small head, and wrapped her shawl again
+closely around her shoulders, and turned her eyes upon the mountains,
+gestures which the now quick-minded Jeff interpreted as a gentle
+dismissal, and flew to seek his aunt.
+
+Here he grew practical.  Ready money was needed; for the "Half-way
+House" was such a public monument of ill-luck, that Jeff had no
+credit.  He must keep up the table to the level of that fortunate
+breakfast--to do which he had $1.50 in the till, left by Bill, and
+$2.50 produced by his Aunt Sally from her work-basket.
+
+"Why not ask Mr. Mayfield to advance ye suthin?" said Aunt Sally.
+
+The blood flew to Jeff's face.  "Never!  Don't say that again, aunty."
+
+The tone and manner were so unlike Jeff that the old lady sat down
+half frightened, and taking the corners of her apron in her hands
+began to whimper.
+
+"Thar now, aunty!  I didn't mean nothin',--only if you care to have
+me about the place any longer, and I reckon it's little good I am any
+way," he added, with a new-found bitterness in his tone, "ye'll not
+ask me to do that."
+
+"What's gone o' ye, Jeff?" said his aunt lugubriously; "ye ain't
+nat'ral like."
+
+Jeff laughed.  "See here, aunty; I'm goin' to take your advice.  You
+know Rabbit?"
+
+"The mare?"
+
+"Yes; I'm going to sell her.  The blacksmith offered me a hundred
+dollars for her last week."
+
+"Ef ye'd done that a month ago, Jeff, ez I wanted ye to, instead o'
+keeping the brute to eat ye out o' house and home, ye'd be better
+off."  Aunt Sally never let slip an opportunity to "improve the
+occasion," but preferred to exhort over the prostrate body of the
+"improved."  "Well, I hope he mayn't change his mind."
+
+Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best horse within fifty
+miles of the "Half-way House."  Nevertheless he went briskly to the
+stable, led out and saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the
+while, and keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to
+which Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches after Jeff's
+red flannel sleeve.  Whereat Jeff, having loved the horse until it
+was displaced by another mistress, grew grave and suddenly threw his
+arms around Rabbit's neck, and then taking Rabbit's nose, thrust it
+in the bosom of his shirt and held it there silently for a moment. 
+Rabbit becoming uneasy, Jeff's mood changed too, and having
+caparisoned himself and charger in true vaquero style, not without a
+little Mexican dandyism as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and
+the tie of his red sash, put a sombrero rakishly on his curls and
+leaped into the saddle.
+
+Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was understood as a
+natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial habit of horse and
+rider, consequently he was not perched up, jockey fashion, with a
+knee-grip for his body, and a rein-rest for his arms on the beast's
+mouth, but rode with long, loose stirrups, his legs clasping the
+barrel of his horse, his single rein lying loose upon her neck,
+leaving her head free as the wind.  After this fashion he had often
+emerged from a cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking
+admiration into the hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and
+leaving a trail of pleasant incense in the dust behind him.  It was
+therefore with considerable confidence in himself, and a little human
+vanity, that he dashed round the house, and threw his mare skilfully
+on her haunches exactly a foot before Miss Mayfield--himself a
+resplendent vision of flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored
+trousers, and jingling silver spurs.
+
+"Kin I do anythin' for ye, miss, at the Forks?"
+
+Miss Mayfield looked up quietly.  "I think not," she said
+indifferently, as if the flaming-Jeff was a very common occurrence.
+
+Jeff here permitted the mare to bolt fifty yards, caught her up
+sharply, swung her round on her off hind heel, permitted her to paw
+the air once or twice with her white-stockinged fore-feet, and then,
+with another dash forward, pulled her up again just before she
+apparently took Miss Mayfield and her chair in a running leap.
+
+"Are you sure, miss?" asked Jeff, with a flushed face and a rather
+lugubrious voice.
+
+"Quite so, thank you," she said coldly, looking past this centaur to
+the wooded mountain beyond.
+
+Jeff, thoroughly crushed, was pacing meekly away when a childlike
+voice stopped him.
+
+"If you are going near a carpenter's shop you might get a new shutter
+for my window; it blew away last night."
+
+"It did, miss?"
+
+"Yes," said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally, from the doorway, 
+"in course it did!  Ye must be crazy, Jeff, for thar it stands in 
+No. 8, whar ye must have put it after ye picked it up outside."
+
+Jeff, conscious that Miss Mayfield's eyes were on his suffused face,
+stammered "that he would attend to it," and put spurs to the mare,
+eager only to escape.
+
+It was not his only discomfiture; for the blacksmith, seeing Jeff's
+nervousness and anxiety, was suspicious of something wrong, as the
+world is apt to be, and appeased his conscience after the worldly
+fashion, by driving a hard bargain with the doubtful brother in
+affliction--the morality of a horse trade residing always with the
+seller.  Whereby Master Jeff received only eighty dollars for horse
+and outfit--worth at least two hundred--and was also mulcted of forty
+dollars, principal and interest for past service of the blacksmith. 
+Jeff walked home with forty dollars in his pocket--capital to
+prosecute his honest calling of innkeeper; the blacksmith retired to
+an adjoining tavern to discuss Jeff's affairs, and further reduce his
+credit.  Yet I doubt which was the happier--the blacksmith estimating
+his possible gains, and doubtful of some uncertain sequence in his
+luck, or Jeff, temporarily relieved, boundlessly hopeful, and filled
+with the vague delights of a first passion.  The only discontented
+brute in the whole transaction was poor Rabbit, who, missing certain
+attentions, became indignant, after the manner of her sex, bit a
+piece out of her crib, kicked a hole in her box, and receiving a bad
+character from the blacksmith, gave a worse one to her late master.
+
+Jeff's purchases were of a temporary and ornamental quality, but not
+always judicious as a permanent investment.  Overhearing some remark
+from Miss Mayfield concerning the dangerous character of the two-
+tined steel fork, which was part of the table equipage of the "Half-
+way House," he purchased half a dozen of what his aunt was pleased to
+specify as "split spoons," and thereby lost his late good standing
+with her.  He not only repaired the window-shutter, but tempered the
+glaring window itself with a bit of curtain; he half carpeted Miss
+Mayfield's bed-room with wild-cat skins and the now historical bear-
+skin, and felt himself overpaid when that young lady, passing the
+soft tabbyskins across her cheek, declared they were "lovely."  For
+Miss Mayfield, deprecating slaughter in the abstract, accepted its
+results gratefully, like the rest of her sex, and while willing to
+"let the hart ungalled play," nevertheless was able to console
+herself with its venison.  The woods, besides yielding aid and
+comfort of this kind to the distressed damsel, were flamboyant with
+vivid spring blossoms, and Jeff lit up the cold, white walls of her
+virgin cell with demonstrative color, and made--what his aunt, a
+cleanly soul, whose ideas of that quality were based upon the absence
+of any color whatever, called--"a litter."
+
+The result of which was to make Miss Mayfield, otherwise lanquid and
+ennuye, welcome Jeff's presence with a smile; to make Jeff, otherwise
+anxious, eager, and keenly attentive, mute and silent in her
+presence.  Two symptoms bad for Jeff.
+
+Meantime Mr. Mayfield's small conventional spirit pined for
+fellowship, only to be found in larger civilizations, and sought,
+under plea of business, a visit to Sacramento, where a few of the
+Mayfield type, still surviving, were to be found.
+
+This was a relief to Jeff, who only through his regard for the
+daughter, was kept from open quarrel with the father.  He fancied
+Miss Mayfield felt relieved too, although Jeff had noticed that
+Mayfield had deferred to his daughter more often than his wife--over
+whom your conventional small autocrat is always victorious.  It takes
+the legal matrimonial contract to properly develop the first-class
+tyrant, male or female.
+
+On one of these days Jeff was returning through the woods from
+marketing at the Forks, which, since the sale of Rabbit, had became a
+foot-sore and tedious business.  He had reached the edge of the
+forest, and through the wider-spaced trees, the bleak sunlit plateau
+of his house was beginning to open out, when he stopped instantly.  
+I know not what Jeff had been thinking of, as he trudged along, but
+here, all at once, he was thrilled and possessed with the odor of
+some faint, foreign perfume.  He flushed a little at first, and then
+turned pale.  Now the woods were as full of as delicate, as subtle,
+as grateful, and, I wot, far healthier and purer odors than this; but
+this represented to Jeff the physical contiguity of Miss Mayfield,
+who had the knack--peculiar to some of her sex--of selecting a
+perfume that ideally identified her.  Jeff looked around cautiously;
+at the foot of a tree hard by lay one of her wraps, still redolent of
+her.  Jeff put down the bag which, in lieu of a market basket, he was
+carrying on his shoulder, and with a blushing face hid it behind a
+tree.  It contained her dinner!
+
+He took a few steps forwards with an assumption of ease and
+unconsciousness.  Then he stopped, for not a hundred yards distant
+sat--Miss Mayfield on a mossy boulder, her cloak hanging from her
+shoulders, her hands clasped round her crossed knees, and one little
+foot out--an exasperating combination of Evangeline and little Red
+Riding Hood in everything, I fear, but credulousness and self-
+devotion.  She looked up as he walked towards her (non constat that
+the little witch had not already seen him half a mile away!) and
+smiled sweetly as she looked at him.  So sweetly, indeed, that poor
+Jeff felt like the hulking wolf of the old world fable, and
+hesitated--as that wolf did not.  The California faunae have 
+possibly depreciated.
+
+"Come here!" she cried, in a small head voice, not unlike a bird's
+twitter.
+
+Jeff lumbered on clumsily.  His high boots had become suddenly very
+heavy.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you.  I've just tired poor mother out--I'm always
+tiring people out--and she's gone back to the house to write letters. 
+Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!"
+
+Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield's presence,
+painfully seated himself on the edge of a very low stone, which had
+the effect of bringing his knees up on a level with his chin, and
+affected an ease glaringly simulated.
+
+"Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff--it is so comfortable."
+
+Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing down like a
+falling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a recumbent position at
+a respectful distance from the little figure.
+
+"There, isn't it nice?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Mayfield."
+
+"But, perhaps," said Miss Mayfield, now that she had him down,
+"perhaps you too have got something to do.  Dear me!  I'm like that
+naughty boy in the story-book, who went round to all the animals, in
+turn, asking them to play with him.  He could only find the butterfly
+who had nothing to do.  I don't wonder he was disgusted.  I hate
+butterflies."
+
+Love clarifies the intellect!  Jeff, astonished at himself, burst
+out, "Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the butterfly only hez a day or
+two to--to--to live and--be happy!"
+
+Miss Mayfield crossed her knees again, and instantly, after the
+sublime fashion of her sex, scattered his intellect by a swift
+transition from the abstract to the concrete.  "But you're not a
+butterfly, Mr. Jeff.  You're always doing something.  You've been
+hunting."
+
+"No-o!" said Jeff, scarlet, as he thought of his gun in pawn at the
+"Summit."
+
+"But you do hunt; I know it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You shot those quail for me the morning after I came.  I heard you
+go out--early--very early."
+
+"Why, you allowed you slept so well that night, Miss Mayfield."
+
+"Yes; but there's a kind of delicious half-sleep that sick people
+have sometimes, when they know and are gratefully conscious that
+other people are doing things for them, and it makes them rest all
+the sweeter."
+
+There was a dead silence.  Jeff, thrilling all over, dared not say
+anything to dispel his delicious dream.  Miss Mayfield, alarmed at
+his readiness with the butterfly illustration, stopped short.  They
+both looked at the prospect, at the distant "Summit Hotel"--a mere
+snow-drift on the mountain--at the clear sunlight on the barren
+plateau, at the bleak, uncompromising "Half-way House," and said
+nothing.
+
+"I ought to be very grateful," at last began Miss Mayfield, in quite
+another voice, and a suggestion that she was now approaching real and
+profitable conversation, "that I'm so much better.  This mountain air
+has been like balm to me.  I feel I am growing stronger day by day. 
+I do not wonder that you are so healthy and so strong as you are, 
+Mr. Jeff."
+
+Jeff, who really did not know before that he was so healthy,
+apologetically admitted the fact.  At the same time, he was miserably
+conscious that Miss Mayfield's condition, despite her ill health, was
+very superior to his own.
+
+"A month ago," she continued reflectively, "my mother would never
+have thought it possible to leave me here alone.  Perhaps she may be
+getting worried now."
+
+Miss Mayfield had calculated over much on Jeff's recumbent position. 
+To her surprise and slight mortification, he rose instantly to his
+feet, and said anxiously
+
+"Ef you think so, miss, p'raps I'm keeping you here."
+
+"Not at all, Mr. Jeff.  Your being here is a sufficient excuse for my
+staying," she replied, with the large dignity of a small body.
+
+Jeff, mentally and physically crushed again, came down a little
+heavier than before, and reclined humbly at her feet.  Second knock-
+down blow for Miss Mayfield.
+
+"Come, Mr. Jeff," said the triumphant goddess, in her first voice,
+"tell me something about yourself.  How do you live here--I mean;
+what do you do?  You ride, of course--and very well too, I can tell
+you!  But you know that.  And of course that scarf and the silver
+spurs and the whole dashing equipage are not intended entirely for
+yourself.  No!  Some young woman is made happy by that exhibition, of
+course.  Well, then, there's the riding down to see her, and perhaps
+the riding out with her, and--what else?"
+
+"Miss Mayfield," said Jeff, suddenly rising above his elbow and his
+grammar, "thar isn't no young woman!  Thar isn't another soul except
+yourself that I've laid eyes on, or cared to see since I've been yer. 
+Ef my aunt hez been telling ye that--she's--she--she--she--she--
+lies."
+
+Absolute, undiluted truth, even of a complimentary nature, is
+confounding to most women.  Miss Mayfield was no exception to her
+sex.  She first laughed, as she felt she ought to, and properly might
+with any other man than Jeff; then she got frightened, and said
+hurriedly, "No, no! you misunderstand me.  Your aunt has said
+nothing."  And then she stopped with a pink spot on her cheek-bones. 
+First blood for Jeff!
+
+Now this would never do; it was worse than the butterflies!  She rose
+to her full height--four feet eleven and a half--and drew her cloak
+over her shoulders.  "I think I will return to the house," she said
+quietly; "I suppose I ought not to overtask my strength."
+
+"You'd better let me go with you, miss," said Jeff submissively.
+
+"I will, on one condition," she said, recovering her archness, with a
+little venom in it, I fear.  "You were going home, too, when I called
+to you.  Now, I do not intend to let you leave that bag behind that
+tree, and then have to come back for it, just because you feel
+obliged to go with me.  Bring it with you on one arm, and I'll take
+the other, or else--I'll go alone.  Don't be alarmed," she added
+softly; "I'm stronger than I was the first night I came, when you
+carried me and all my worldly goods besides."
+
+She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and looked at him as
+she had the first night they met.  Jeff turned away bewildered, but
+presently appeared again with the bag on his shoulder, and her wrap
+on his arm.  As she slipped her little hand over his sleeve, he
+began, apologetically and nervously 
+ 
+"When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I"-- 
+
+The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.
+
+"I was mad, miss," Jeff blundered on, "and I don't see how you
+believed it--knowing everything ez you do."
+
+"How knowing everything as I do?" asked Miss Mayfield coldly.
+
+"Why, about the quail, and about the bag!"
+
+"Oh," said Miss Mayfield.
+
+Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utter
+amazement at an apparently simple spectacle--a tall, good-looking
+young fellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his
+back, and beside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small,
+slight, pretty girl in a red cloak.  "Nothing mean about her, eh,
+Bill?" said as admiring box-passenger.  "Young couple, I reckon, just
+out from the States."
+
+"No!" roared Bill.
+
+"Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?" suggested the box-passenger.
+
+"Nary time!" growled Bill.  "Look yer!  I know 'em both, and they
+knows me.  Did ye notiss she never drops his arm when she sees the
+stage comin', but kinder trapes along jist the same?  Had they been
+courtin', she'd hev dropped his arm like pizen, and walked on t'other 
+side the road."
+
+Nevertheless, for some occult reason, Bill was evidently out of
+humor; and for the next few miles exhorted the impenitent Blue Grass
+horse with considerable fervor.
+
+Meanwhile this pair, outwardly the picture of pastoral conjugality,
+slowly descended the hill.  In that brief time, failing to get at any
+further facts regarding Jeff's life, or perhaps reading the story
+quite plainly, Miss Mayfield had twittered prettily about herself. 
+She painted her tropic life in the Sandwich Islands--her delicious
+"laziness," as she called it; "for, you know," she added, "although 
+I had the excuse of being an invalid, and of living in the laziest
+climate in the world, and of having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that
+I'm naturally lazy.  Perhaps if I lived here long enough, and got
+well again, I might do something, but I don't think I could ever be
+like your aunt.  And there she is now, Mr. Jeff, making signs for
+you to hasten.  No, don't mind me, but run on ahead; else I shall
+have her blaming me for demoralizing you too.  Go; I insist upon it!
+I can walk the rest of the way alone.  Will you go?  You won't?  Then
+I shall stop here and not stir another step forward until you do."
+
+She stopped, half jestingly, half earnestly, in the middle of the
+road, and emphasized her determination with a nod of her head--an
+action that, however, shook her hat first rakishly over one eye, and
+then on the ground.  At which Jeff laughed, picked it up, presented
+it to her, and then ran off to the house.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+His aunt met him angrily on the porch.  "Thar ye are at last, and
+yer's a stranger waitin to see you.  He's been axin all sorts 
+o' questions, about the house and the business, and kinder snoopin'
+round permiskiss.  I don't like his looks, Jeff, but thet's no reason
+why ye should be gallivantin' round in business hours."
+
+A large, thick-set man, with a mechanical smile that was an overt 
+act of false pretense, was lounging in the bar-room.  Jeff dimly
+remembered to have seen him at the last county election, distributing
+tickets at the polls.  This gave Jeff a slight prejudice against him,
+but a greater presentiment of some vague evil in the air caused him
+to motion the stranger to an empty room in the angle of the house
+behind the barroom, which was too near the hall through which Miss
+Mayfield must presently pass.
+
+It was an infelicitous act of precaution, for at that very moment
+Miss Mayfield slowly passed beneath its open window, and seeing her
+chair in the sunny angle, dropped into it for rest and possibly
+meditation.  Consequently she overheard every word of the following
+colloquy.
+
+The Stranger's voice: "Well, now, seein' ez I've been waitin' for ye
+over an hour, off and on, and ez my bizness with ye is two words, it
+strikes me yer puttin' on a little too much style in this yer
+interview, Mr. Jefferson Briggs."
+
+Jeff's voice (a little husky with restraint): "What is yer business?"
+
+The stranger's voice (lazily): "It's an at-tachment on this yer
+property for principal, interest, and costs--one hundred and twelve
+dollars and' seventy-five cents, at the suit of Cyrus Parker."
+
+Jeff's voice (in quick surprise): "Parker?  Why, I saw him only
+yesterday, and he agreed to wait a spell longer."
+
+The Stranger's voice: "Mebbee he did!  Mebbee he heard afterwards
+suthin' about the goin's on up yar.  Mebbee he heard suthin' o'
+property bein' converted into ready cash--sich property ez horses,
+guns, and sich!  Mebbee he heard o' gay and festive doin's--chickin
+every day, fresh eggs, butcher's meat, port wine, and sich!  Mebbee
+he allowed that his chances o' gettin' his own honest grub outer his
+debt was lookin' mighty slim!  Mebbee" (louder) "he thought he'd ask
+the man who bought yer horse, and the man you pawned your gun to,
+what was goin' on!  Mebbee he thought he'd like to get a holt a
+suthin' himself, even if it was only some of that yar chickin and
+port wine!"
+
+Jeff's voice (earnestly and hastily): "They're not for me.  I have a
+family boarding here, with a sick daughter.  You don't think--"
+
+The Stranger's voice (lazily): "I reckon!  I seed you and her pre-
+ambulating down the hill, lockin' arms.  A good deal o' style, 
+Jeff--fancy! expensive!  How does Aunt Sally take it?"
+
+A slight shaking of the floor and window--a dead silence.
+
+The Stranger's voice (very faintly): "For God's sake, let me up!"
+
+Jeff's voice (very distinctly): "Another word! raise your voice above
+a whisper, and by the living G--"
+
+Silence.
+
+The Stranger's voice (gasping): "I--I--promise!"
+
+Jeff's voice (low and desperate): "Get up out of that!  Sit down
+thar!  Now hear me!  I'm not resisting your process.  If you had all
+h-ll as witnesses you daren't say that.  I've shut up your foul jaw,
+and kept it from poisoning the air, and thar's no law in Californy
+agin it!  Now listen.  What!  You will, will you?"
+
+Everything quiet; a bird twittering on the window ledge, nothing
+more.
+
+The Stranger's voice (very huskily): "I cave!  Gimme some whiskey."
+
+Jeff's voice: "When we're through.  Now listen!  You can take
+possession of the house; you can stand behind the bar and take every
+cent that comes in; you can prevent anything going out; but as long
+as Mr. Mayfield and his family stay here, by the living God--law or
+no law--I'll be boss here, and they shall never know it!"
+
+The Stranger's voice (weakly and submissively): "That sounds square. 
+Anythin' not agin the law and in reason, Jeff!"
+
+Jeff's voice: "I mean to be square.  Here is all the money I have,
+ten dollars.  Take it for any extra trouble you may have to satisfy
+me."
+
+A pause--the clinking of coin.
+
+The Stranger's voice (deprecatingly): "Well! I reckon that would be
+about fair.  Consider the trouble" (a weak laugh here) "just now.  
+'Tain't every man ez hez your grip.  He! he!  Ef ye hadn't took me
+so suddent like--he! he!--well!--how about that ar whiskey?"
+
+Jeff's voice (coolly): "I'll bring it."
+
+Steps, silence, coughing, spitting, and throat-clearing from the
+stranger.
+
+Steps again, and the click of glass.
+
+The Stranger's voice (submissively): "In course I must go back to the
+Forks and fetch up my duds.  Ye know what I mean!  Thar now--don't,
+Mr. Jeff!"
+
+Jeff's voice (sternly): "If I find you go back on me--"
+
+The Stranger's voice (hurriedly): "Thar's my hand on it.  Ye can
+count on Jim Dodd."
+
+Steps again.  Silence.  A bird lights on the window ledge, and peers
+into the room.  All is at rest.
+
+Jeff and the deputy-sheriff walked through the bar-room and out on
+the porch.  Miss Mayfield in an arm-chair looked up from her book.
+
+"I've written a letter to my father that I'd like to have mailed at
+the Forks this afternoon," she said, looking from Jeff to the
+stranger; "perhaps this gentleman will oblige me by taking it, if
+he's going that way."
+
+"I'll take it, miss," said Jeff hurriedly.
+
+"No," said Miss Mayfield archly, "I've taken up too much of your
+time already."
+
+"I'm at your service, miss," said the stranger, considerably affected
+by the spectacle of this pretty girl, who certainly at that moment,
+in her bright eyes and slightly pink cheeks, belied the suggestion of
+ill health.
+
+"Thank you.  Dear me!"  She was rummaging in a reticule and in her 
+pocket, etc.  "Oh, Mr. Jeff!"
+
+"Yes, miss?"
+
+"I'm so frightened!"
+
+"How, miss?"
+
+"I have--yes!--I have left that letter on the stump in the woods, 
+where I was sitting when you came.  Would you--"
+
+Jeff darted into the house, seized his hat, and stopped.  He was 
+thinking of the stranger.
+
+"Could you be so kind?"
+
+Jeff looked in her agitated face, cast a meaning glance at the 
+stranger, and was off like a shot.
+
+The fire dropped out of Miss Mayfield's eyes and cheeks.  She 
+turned toward the stranger.
+
+"Please step this way."
+
+She always hated her own childish treble.  But just at that moment 
+she thought she had put force and dignity into it, and was 
+correspondingly satisfied.  The deputy sheriff was equally pleased, 
+and came towards the upright little figure with open admiration.
+
+"Your name is Dodd--James Dodd?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"You are the deputy sheriff of the county?  Don't look round--there 
+is no one here!"
+
+"Well, miss--if you say so--yes!"
+
+"My father--Mr. Mayfield--understood so.  I regret he is not here.  
+I regret still more I could not have seen you before you saw Mr. 
+Briggs, as he wished me to."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"My father is a friend of Mr. Briggs, and knows something of his 
+affairs.  There was a debt to a Mr. Parker" (here Miss Mayfield 
+apparently consulted an entry in her tablets) "of one hundred and 
+twelve dollars and seventy-five cents--am I right?"
+
+The deputy, with great respect: "That is the figgers."
+
+"Which he wished to pay without the knowledge of Mr. Briggs, who 
+would not have consented to it."
+
+The official opened his eyes.  "Yes, miss."
+
+"Well, as Mr. Mayfield is NOT here, I am here to pay it for him.  
+You can take a check on Wells, Fargo & Co., I suppose?"
+
+"Certainly, miss."
+
+She took a check-book and pen and ink from her reticule, and filled 
+up a check.  She handed it to him, and the pen and ink.  "You are 
+to give me a receipt."
+
+The deputy looked at the matter-of-fact little figure, and signed 
+and handed over the receipted bill.
+
+"My father said Mr. Briggs was not to know this."
+
+"Certainly not, miss."
+
+"It was Mr. Briggs's intention to let the judgment take its course, 
+and give up the house.  You are a man of business, Mr. Dodd, and 
+know that this is ridiculous!"
+
+The deputy laughed.  "In course, miss."
+
+"And whatever Mr. Briggs may have proposed to you to do, when you 
+go back to the Forks, you are to write him a letter, and say that 
+you will simply hold the judgment without levy."
+
+"All right, miss," said the deputy, not ill-pleased to hold himself 
+in this superior attitude to Jeff.
+
+"And--"
+
+"Yes, miss?"
+
+She looked steadily at him.  "Mr. Briggs told my father that he 
+would pay you ten dollars for the privilege of staying here."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"And, of course, THAT'S not necessary now."
+
+"No-o, miss."
+
+A very small white hand--a mere child's hand--was here extended, 
+palm uppermost.
+
+The official, demoralized completely, looked at it a moment, then 
+went into his pockets and counted out into the palm the coins given 
+by Jeff; they completely filled the tiny receptacle.
+
+Miss Mayfield counted the money gravely, and placed it in her 
+portemonnaie with a snap.
+
+Certain qualities affect certain natures.  This practical business 
+act of the diminutive beauty before him--albeit he was just ten 
+dollars out of pocket by it--struck the official into helpless 
+admiration.  He hesitated.
+
+"That's all," said Miss Mayfield coolly; "you need not wait.  The 
+letter was only an excuse to get Mr. Briggs out of the way."
+
+"I understand ye, miss."  He hesitated still.  "Do you reckon to 
+stop in these parts long?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"'Cause ye ought to come down some day to the Forks."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good morning, miss."
+
+"Good morning."
+
+Yet at the corner of the house the rascal turned and looked back at 
+the little figure in the sunlight.  He had just been physically 
+overcome by a younger man--he had lost ten dollars--he had a wife 
+and three children.  He forgot all this.  He had been captivated by 
+Miss Mayfield!
+
+That practical heroine sat there five minutes.  At the end of that 
+time Jeff came bounding down the hill, his curls damp with 
+perspiration; his fresh, honest face the picture of woe, HER woe, 
+for the letter could not be found!
+
+"Never mind, Mr. Jeff.  I wrote another and gave it to him."
+
+Two tears were standing on her cheeks.  Jeff turned white.
+
+"Good God, miss!"
+
+"It's nothing.  You were right, Mr. Jeff!  I ought not to have 
+walked down here alone.  I'm very, very tired, and--so--so 
+miserable."
+
+What woman could withstand the anguish of that honest boyish face?  
+I fear Miss Mayfield could, for she looked at him over her 
+handkerchief, and said: "Perhaps you had something to say to your 
+friend, and I've sent him off."
+
+"Nothing," said Jeff hurriedly; and she saw that all his other 
+troubles had vanished at the sight of her weakness.  She rose 
+tremblingly from her seat.  "I think I will go in now, but I think--
+I think--I must ask you to--to--carry me!"
+
+Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!
+
+The next moment, Jeff, pale, strong, passionate, but tender as a 
+mother, lifted her in his arms and brought her into the sitting-
+room.  A simultaneous ejaculation broke from Aunt Sally and Mrs. 
+Mayfield--the possible comment of posterity on the whole episode.
+
+"Well, Jeff, I reckoned you'd be up to suthin' like that!"
+
+"Well, Jessie!  I knew you couldn't be trusted."
+
+
+Mr. James Dodd did not return from the Forks that afternoon, to 
+Jeff's vague uneasiness.  Towards evening a messenger brought a 
+note from him, written on the back of a printed legal form, to this 
+effect:
+
+
+DEAR SIR--Seeing as you Intend to act on the Square in regard to 
+that little Mater I have aranged Things so that I ant got to stop 
+with you but I'll drop in onct in a wile to keep up a show for a 
+Drink--respy yours, J. DODD.
+
+
+In this latter suggestion our legal Cerberus exhibited all three of 
+his heads at once.  One could keep faith with Miss Mayfield, one 
+could see her "onct in a wile," and one could drink at Jeff's 
+expense.  Innocent Jeff saw only generosity and kindness in the man 
+he had half-choked, and a sense of remorse and shame almost 
+outweighed the relief of his absence.  "He might hev been ugly," 
+said Jeff.  He did not know how, in this selfish world, there is 
+very little room for gratuitous, active ugliness.
+
+Miss Mayfield did not leave her room that afternoon.  The wind was 
+getting up, and it was growing dark when Jeff, idly sitting on his 
+porch, hoping for her appearance, was quite astounded at the 
+apparition of Yuba Bill as a pedestrian, dusty and thirsty, making 
+for his usual refreshment.  Jeff brought out the bottle, but 
+could not refrain from mixing his verbal astonishment with the 
+conventional cocktail.  Bill, partaking of his liquor and becoming 
+once more a speaking animal, slowly drew off his heavy, baggy 
+driving gloves.  No one had ever seen Bill without them--he was 
+currently believed to sleep in them--and when he laid them on the 
+counter they still retained the grip of his hand, which gave them 
+an entertaining likeness to two plethoric and overfed spiders.
+
+"Ef I concluded to pass over my lines to a friend and take a pasear 
+up yer this evening," said Bill, eying Jeff sharply, "I don't know 
+ez thar's any law agin it!  Onless yer keepin' a private branch o' 
+the Occidental Ho-tel, and on'y take in fash'n'ble fammerlies!"
+
+Jeff, with a rising color, protested against such a supposition.
+
+"Because ef ye ARE," said Bill, lifting his voice, and crushing one 
+of the overgrown spiders with his fist, "I've got a word or two to 
+say to the son of Joe Briggs of Tuolumne.  Yes, sir! Joe Briggs--
+yer father--ez blew his brains out for want of a man ez could stand 
+up and say a word to him at the right time."
+
+"Bill," said Jeff, in a low, resolute tone--that tone yielded up 
+only from the smitten chords of despair and desperation--"thar's a 
+sick woman in the house.  I'll listen to anything you've got to say 
+if you'll say it quietly.  But you must and SHALL speak low."
+
+Real men quickly recognize real men the world over; it is only your 
+shams who fence and spar.  Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker 
+more than his words, dropped his own.
+
+"I said I had a kepple of words to say to ye.  Thar isn't any time 
+in the last fower months--ever since ye took stock in this old 
+shanty, for the matter o' that--that I couldn't hev said them to 
+ye.  I've knowed all your doin's.  I've knowed all your debts, 
+'spesh'ly that ye owe that sneakin' hound Parker; and thar isn't a 
+time that I couldn't and wouldn't hev chipped in and paid 'em for 
+ye--for your father's sake--ef I'd allowed it to be the square 
+thing for ye.  But I know ye, Jeff.  I know what's in your BLOOD.  
+I knew your father--allus dreamin', hopin,' waitin'; I know YOU, 
+Jeff, dreamin', hopin', waitin' till the end.  And I stood by, 
+givin' you a free rein, and let it come!"
+
+Jeff buried his face in his hands.
+
+"It ain't your blame--it's blood!  It ain't a week ago ez the 
+kimpany passes me over a hoss.  'Three-quarters Morgan,' sez they.  
+Sez I: 'Wot's the other quarter?'  Sez they: 'A Mexican half-
+breed.'  Well, she was a fair sort of hoss.  Comin' down Heavytree 
+Hill last trip, we meets a drove o' Spanish steers.  In course she 
+goes wild directly.  Blood!"
+
+Bill raised his glass, softly swirled its contents round and round, 
+tasted it, and set it down.
+
+"The kepple o' words I had to say to ye was this: Git up and git!"
+
+Something like this had passed through Jeff's mind the day before 
+the Mayfields came.  Something like it had haunted him once or 
+twice since.  He turned quickly upon the speaker.
+
+"Ez how? you sez," said Bill, catching at the hook.  "I drives up 
+yer some night, and you sez to me, 'Bill, hev you got two seats 
+over to the Divide for me and aunty--out on a pasear.'  And I sez, 
+'I happen to hev one inside and one on the box with me.'  And you 
+hands out yer traps and any vallybles ye don't want ter leave, and 
+you puts your aunt inside, and gets up on the box with me.  And you 
+sez to me, ez man to man, 'Bill,' sez you, 'might you hev a kepple 
+o' hundred dollars about ye that ye could lend a man ez was leaving 
+the county, dead broke?' and I sez, 'I've got it, and I know of an 
+op'nin' for such a man in the next county.'  And you steps into 
+THAT op'nin', and your creditors--'spesh'ly Parker--slips into 
+THIS, and in a week they offers to settle with ye ten cents on the 
+dollar."
+
+Jeff started, flushed, trembled, recovered himself, and after a 
+moment said, doggedly: "I can't do it, Bill; I couldn't."
+
+"In course," said Bill, putting his hands slowly into his pockets, 
+and stretching his legs out--"in course ye can't because of a 
+woman!"
+
+Jeff turned upon him like a hunted bear.  Both men rose, but Bill 
+already had his hand on Jeff's shoulder.
+
+"I reckoned a minute ago there was a sick gal in the house!  Who's 
+going to make a row now!  Who's going to stamp and tear round, eh?"
+
+Jeff sank back on his chair.
+
+"I said thar was a woman," continued Bill; "thar allus is one!  Let 
+a man be hell-bent or heaven-bent, somewhere in his track is a 
+woman's feet.  I don't say anythin' agin this gal, ez a gal.  The 
+best of 'em, Jeff, is only guide-posts to p'int a fellow on his 
+right road, and only a fool or a drunken man holds on to 'em or 
+leans agin em.  Allowin' this gal is all you think she is, how far 
+is your guide-post goin' with ye, eh?  Is she goin' to leave her 
+father and mother for ye?  Is she goin' to give up herself and her 
+easy ways and her sicknesses for ye?  Is she willin' to take ye for 
+a perpetooal landlord the rest of her life?  And if she is, Jeff, 
+are ye the man to let her?  Are ye willin' to run on her errants, 
+to fetch her dinners ez ye do?  Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in 
+Californy, but over in the States thar's fellows is willing to take 
+that situation.  I've heard," continued Bill, in a low, mysterious 
+voice, as of one describing the habits of the Anthropophagi--"I've 
+heard o' fellows ez call themselves men, sellin' of themselves to 
+rich women in that way.  I've heard o' rich gals buyin' of men for 
+their shape; sometimes--but thet's in furrin' kintries--for their 
+pedigree!  I've heard o' fellows bein' in that business, and 
+callin' themselves men instead o' hosses!  Ye ain't that kind o' 
+man, Jeff.  'Tain't in yer blood.  Yer father was a fool about 
+women, and in course they ruined him, as they allus do the best 
+men.  It's on'y the fools and sneaks ez a woman ever makes anythin' 
+out of.  When ye hear of a man a woman hez made, ye hears of a 
+nincompoop.  And when they does produce 'em in the way o' nater, 
+they ain't responsible for 'em, and sez they're the image o' their 
+fathers!  Ye ain't a man ez is goin' to trust yer fate to a woman!"
+
+"No," said Jeff darkly.
+
+"I reckoned not," said Bill, putting his hands in his pockets 
+again.  "Ye might if ye was one o' them kind o' fellows as kem up 
+from 'Frisco with her to Sacramento.  One o' them kind o' fellows 
+ez could sling poetry and French and Latin to her--one of HER kind--
+but ye ain't!  No, sir!"
+
+Unwise William of Yuba!  In any other breast but Jeff's that random 
+shot would have awakened the irregular auxiliary of love--jealousy!  
+But Jeff, being at once proud and humble, had neither vanity nor 
+conceit, without which jealousy is impossible.  Yet he winced a 
+little, for he had feeling, and then said earnestly:
+
+"Do you think that opening you spoke of would hold for a day or two 
+longer?"
+
+"I reckon."
+
+"Well, then, I think I can settle up matters here my own way, and 
+go with you, Bill."
+
+He had risen, and yet hesitatingly kept his hand on the back of his 
+chair.  "Bill!"
+
+"Jeff!"
+
+"I want to ask you a question; speak up, and don't mind me, but say 
+the truth."
+
+Our crafty Ulysses, believing that he was about to be entrapped, 
+ensconced himself in his pockets, cocked one eye, and said: "Go on, 
+Jeff."
+
+"Was my father VERY bad?"
+
+Bill took his hands from his pockets.  "Thar isn't a man ez crawls 
+above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same ground with him!"
+
+"Thank you, Bill.  Good night; I'm going to turn in!"
+
+"Look yar, boy!  G-d d--n it all, Jeff! what do ye mean?"
+
+There were two tears--twin sisters of those in his sweetheart's 
+eyes that afternoon--now standing in Jeff's!
+
+Bill caught both his hands in his own.  Had they been of the Latin 
+race they would have, right honestly, taken each other in their 
+arms, and perhaps kissed!  Being Anglo-Saxons, they gripped each 
+other's hands hard, and one, as above stated, swore!
+
+When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went directly to his 
+trunk and took out Miss Mayfield's slipper.  Alack! during the day 
+Aunt Sally had "put things to rights" in his room, and the trunk 
+had been moved.  This had somewhat disordered its contents, and 
+Miss Mayfield's slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley's 
+cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a 
+coral earring which Jeff--on the most apocryphal authority--fondly 
+believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a 
+small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for "good 
+conduct," much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously 
+kept as evidence of former conventional character.  He colored a 
+little, rubbed the medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, 
+replaced them in his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of 
+the slipper's contents on the floor.  This done, he drew off his 
+boots, and, gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on 
+the knob of Miss Mayfield's door, and glided back again without 
+detection.
+
+Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his bed.  But not 
+to sleep!  Staringly wide awake, he at last felt the lulling of the 
+wind that nightly shook his casement, and listened while the great, 
+rambling, creaking, disjointed "Half-way House" slowly settled 
+itself to repose.  He thought of many things; of himself, of his 
+past, of his future, but chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face 
+now sleeping contentedly in the chamber below him.  He tossed with 
+many plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then began 
+to doze.  Whereat the moon, creeping in the window, laid a cold 
+white arm across him, and eventually dried a few foolish tears upon 
+his sleeping lashes.
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next morning when 
+Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her.  The moment was not a felicitous 
+one.  Pie-making was usually an aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, 
+entered into severely, and prosecuted unto the bitter end.  After 
+watching her a few moments Jeff came up and placed his arms 
+tenderly around her.  People very much in love find relief, I am 
+told, in this vicarious expression.
+
+"Aunty."
+
+"Well, Jeff!  Thar, now--yer gittin' all dough!"  Nevertheless, the 
+hard face relaxed a little.  Something of a smile stole round her 
+mouth, showing what she might have been before theology and bitters 
+had supplied the natural feminine longings.
+
+"Aunty dear!"
+
+"You--boy!"
+
+It WAS a boy's face--albeit bearded like the pard, with an extra 
+fierceness in the mustaches--that looked upon hers.  She could not 
+help bestowing a grim floury kiss upon it.
+
+"Well, what is it now?"
+
+"I'm thinking, aunty, it's high time you and me packed up our traps 
+and 'shook' this yar shanty, and located somewhere else."  Jeff's 
+voice was ostentatiously cheerful, but his eyes were a little 
+anxious.
+
+"What for NOW?"
+
+Jeff hastily recounted his ill luck, and the various reasons--
+excepting of course the dominant one--for his resolution.
+
+"And when do you kalkilate to go?"
+
+"If you'll look arter things here," hesitated Jeff, "I reckon I'll 
+go up along with Bill to-morrow, and look round a bit."
+
+"And how long do you reckon that gal would stay here after yar 
+gone?"
+
+This was a new and startling idea to Jeff.  But in his humility he 
+saw nothing in it to flatter his conceit.  Rather the reverse.  He 
+colored, and then said apologetically,--
+
+"I thought that you and Jinny could get along without me.  The 
+butcher will pack the provisions over from the Fork."
+
+Laying down her rolling-pin, Aunt Sally turned upon Jeff with 
+ostentatious deliberation.  "Ye ain't," she began slowly, "ez 
+taking a man with wimmen ez your father was--that's a fact, Jeff 
+Briggs!  They used to say that no woman as he went for could get 
+away from him.  But ye don't mean to say yer think yer not good 
+enough--such as ye are--for this snip of an old maid, ez big as a 
+gold dollar, and as yaller?"
+
+"Aunty," said Jeff, dropping his boyish manner, and his color as 
+suddenly, "I'd rather ye wouldn't talk that way of Miss Mayfield.  
+Ye don't know her; and there's times," he added, with a sigh, "ez I 
+reckon ye don't quite know ME either.  That young lady, bein' sick, 
+likes to be looked after.  Any one can do that for her.  She don't 
+mind who it is.  She don't care for me except for that, and," added 
+Jeff humbly, "it's quite natural."
+
+"I didn't say she did," returned Aunt Sally viciously; "but seeing 
+ez you've got an empty house yer on yer hands, and me a-slavin' 
+here on jist nothin', if this gal, for the sake o' gallivantin' 
+with ye for a spell, chooses to stay here and keep her family here, 
+and pay high for it, I don't see why it ain't yer duty to 
+Providence and me to take advantage of it."
+
+Jeff raised his eyes to his aunt's face.  For the first time it 
+struck him that she might be his father's sister and yet have no 
+blood in her veins that answered to his.  There are few shocks more 
+startling and overpowering to original natures than this sudden 
+sense of loneliness.  Jeff could not speak, but remained looking 
+fiercely at her.
+
+Aunt Sally misinterpreted his silence, and returned to her work on 
+the pies.  "The gal ain't no fool," she continued, rolling out the 
+crust as if she were laying down broad propositions.  "SHE reckons 
+on it too, ez if it was charged in the bill with the board and 
+lodging.  Why, didn't she say to me, last night, that she 
+kalkilated afore she went away to bring up some friends from 
+'Frisco for a few days' visit? and didn't she say, in that pipin', 
+affected voice o' hers, 'I oughter make some return for yer 
+kindness and yer nephew's kindness, Aunt Sally, by showing people 
+that can help you, and keep your house full, how pleasant it is up 
+here.'  She ain't no fool, with all her faintin's and dyin's away!  
+No, Jeff Briggs.  And if she wants to show ye off agin them city 
+fellows ez she knows, and ye ain't got spunk enough to stand up and 
+show off with her--why"--she turned her head impatiently, but he 
+was gone.
+
+If Jeff had ever wavered in his resolution he would have been 
+steady enough NOW.  But he had never wavered; the convictions and 
+resolutions of suddenly awakened character are seldom moved by 
+expediency.  He was eager to taste the bitter dregs of his cup at 
+once.  He began to pack his trunk, and make his preparations for 
+departure.  Without avoiding Miss Mayfield in this new excitement, 
+he no longer felt the need of her presence.  He had satisfied his 
+feverish anxieties by placing his trunk in the hall beside his open 
+door, and was sitting on his bed, wrestling with a faded and 
+overtasked carpet-bag that would not close and accept his hard 
+conditions, when a small voice from the staircase thrilled him.  He 
+walked to the corridor, and, looking down, beheld Miss Mayfield 
+midway on the steps of the staircase.
+
+She had never looked so beautiful before!  Jeff had only seen her 
+in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille that belong to 
+invalid femininity.  Always refined and modest thus, in her present 
+walking-costume there was added a slight touch of coquettish 
+adornment.  There was a brightness of color in her cheek and eye, 
+partly the result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of 
+that audacious impulse that had led her--a modest virgin--to seek a 
+gentleman in this personal fashion.  Modesty in a young girl has a 
+comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; 
+but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously 
+thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the 
+threshold of Propriety.
+
+"The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed must come to 
+the mountain," said Miss Mayfield.  "Mother is asleep, Aunt Sally 
+is at work in the kitchen, and here am I, already dressed for a 
+ramble in this bright afternoon sunshine, and no one to go with me.  
+But, perhaps, you, too, are busy?"
+
+"No, miss.  I will be with you in a moment."
+
+I wish I could say that he went back to calm his pulses, which the 
+dangerous music of Miss Mayfield's voice had set to throbbing, by 
+a few moments' calm and dispassionate reflection.  But he only 
+returned to brush his curls out of his eyes and ears, and to button 
+over his blue flannel shirt a white linen collar, which he thought 
+might better harmonize with Miss Mayfield's attire.
+
+She was sitting on the staircase, poking her parasol through the 
+balusters.  "You need not have taken that trouble, Mr. Jeff," she 
+said pleasantly.  "YOU are a part of this mountain picture at all 
+times; but I am obliged to think of dress."
+
+"It was no trouble, miss."
+
+Something in the tone of his voice made her look in his face as she 
+rose.  It was a trifle paler, and a little older.  The result, 
+doubtless, thought Miss Mayfield, of his yesterday's experience 
+with the deputy-sheriff.
+
+Such was her rapid deduction.  Nevertheless, after the fashion of 
+her sex, she immediately began to argue from quite another 
+hypothesis.
+
+"You are angry with me, Mr. Jeff."
+
+"What, I--Miss Mayfield?"
+
+"Yes, you!"
+
+"Miss Mayfield!"
+
+"Oh yes, you are.  Don't deny it?"
+
+"Upon my soul--"
+
+"Yes!  You give me punishments and--penances!"
+
+Jeff opened his blue eyes on his tormentor.  Could Aunt Sally have 
+been saying anything?
+
+"If anybody, Miss Mayfield--" he began.
+
+"Nobody but you.  Look here!"
+
+She extended her little hand with a smile.  In the centre of her 
+palm lay four shining double B SHOT.
+
+"There!  I found those in my slipper this morning!"  Jeff was 
+speechless.
+
+"Of course YOU did it!  Of course it was YOU who found my slipper!" 
+said Miss Mayfield, laughing.  "But why did you put shot in it, Mr. 
+Jeff?  In some Catholic countries, when people have done wrong, the 
+priests make them do penance by walking with peas in their shoes!  
+What have I ever done to you?  And why SHOT?  They're ever so much 
+harder than peas."
+
+Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before him, and the 
+open palm containing the damning evidence of the broken Eley's 
+cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.
+
+"I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield.  I put it in 
+my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn't miss it, and it's being a 
+kind of remembrance after you're gone away--of--of the night you 
+came here.  Somebody moved the trunk in my room," and he hung his 
+head here.  "The things inside all got mixed up."
+
+"And that made you change your mind about keeping it?" said Miss 
+Mayfield, still smiling.
+
+"No, miss."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was going away."
+
+"Indeed!  Where?"
+
+"I'm going to find another location.  Maybe you've noticed," he 
+continued, falling back into his old apologetic manner in spite of 
+his pride of resolution--"maybe you've noticed that this place here 
+has no advantages for a hotel."
+
+"I had not, indeed.  I have been very comfortable."
+
+"Thank you, miss."
+
+"When do you go?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+For all his pride and fixed purpose he could not help looking 
+eagerly in her face.  Miss Mayfield's eyes met his pleasantly and 
+quietly.
+
+"I'm sorry to part with you so soon," she said, as she stepped back 
+a pace or two with folded hands.  "Of course every moment of your 
+time now is occupied.  You must not think of wasting it on me."
+
+But Jeff had recovered his sad composure.  "I'd like to go with 
+you, Miss Mayfield.  It's the last time, you know," he added 
+simply.
+
+Miss Mayfield did not reply.  It was a tacit assent, however, 
+although she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as they walked 
+towards the door.  Quite convinced that Jeff's resolution came from 
+his pecuniary troubles, Miss Mayfield was wondering if she had not 
+better assure him of his security from further annoyance from Dodd.  
+Wonderful complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at 
+his ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have 
+known.  Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly 
+treated.  How many of our miserable sex, incapable of divination, 
+have been crushed under that unreasonable feminine reproof, "You 
+ought to have known!"
+
+The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as they stepped out 
+before the bleak angle of the "Half-way House"; but it failed to 
+mitigate the habitually practical austerity of the mountain breeze--
+a fact which Miss Mayfield had never before noticed.  The house 
+was certainly bleak and exposed; the site by no means a poetical 
+one.  She wondered if she had not put a romance into it, and 
+perhaps even into the man beside her, which did not belong to 
+either.  It was a moment of dangerous doubt.
+
+"I don't know but that you're right, Mr. Jeff," she said finally, 
+as they faced the hill, and began the ascent together.  "This place 
+is a little queer, and bleak, and--unattractive."
+
+"Yes, miss," said Jeff, with direct simplicity, "I've always 
+wondered what you saw in it to make you content to stay, when it 
+would be so much prettier, and more suitable for you at the 
+'Summit.'"
+
+Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent.  After a few moments' 
+climbing she said, almost pettishly, "Where is this famous 
+'Summit'?"
+
+Jeff stopped.  They had reached the top of the hill.  He pointed 
+across an olive-green chasm to a higher level, where, basking in 
+the declining sun, clustered the long rambling outbuildings around 
+the white blinking facade of the "Summit House."  Framed in pines 
+and hemlocks, tender with soft gray shadows, and nestling beyond a 
+foreground of cultivated slope, it was a charming rustic picture.
+
+Miss Mayfield's quick eye took in its details.  Her quick intellect 
+took in something else.  She had seated herself on the road-bank, 
+and, clasping her knees between her locked fingers, she suddenly 
+looked up at Jeff.  "What possessed you to come half-way up a 
+mountain, instead of going on to the top?"
+
+"Poverty, miss!"
+
+Miss Mayfield flushed a little at this practical direct answer to 
+her half-figurative question.  However, she began to think that 
+moral Alpine-climbing youth might have pecuniary restrictions in 
+their high ambitions, and that the hero of "Excelsior" might have 
+succumbed to more powerful opposition than the wisdom of Age or the 
+blandishments of Beauty.
+
+"You mean that poverty up there is more expensive?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"But you would like to live there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They were both silent.  Miss Mayfield glanced at Jeff under the 
+corners of her lashes.  He was leaning against a tree, absorbed in 
+thought.  Accustomed to look upon him as a pleasing picturesque 
+object, quite fresh, original, and characteristic, she was somewhat 
+disturbed to find that to-day he presented certain other qualities 
+which clearly did not agree with her preconceived ideas of his 
+condition.  He had abandoned his usual large top-boots for low 
+shoes, and she could not help noticing that his feet were small and 
+slender as were his hands, albeit browned by exposure.  His ruddy 
+color was gone too, and his face, pale with sorrow and experience, 
+had a new expression.  His buttoned-up coat and white collar, so 
+unlike his usual self, also had its suggestions--which Miss 
+Mayfield was at first inclined to resent.  Women are quick to 
+notice and augur more or less wisely from these small details.  
+Nevertheless, she began in quite another tone.
+
+"Do you remember your mother--MR.--MR.--BRIGGS?"
+
+Jeff noticed the new epithet.  "No, miss; she died when I was quite 
+young."
+
+"Your father, then?"
+
+Jeff's eye kindled a little, aggressively.  "I remember HIM."
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"Miss Mayfield!"
+
+"What was his business or profession?"
+
+"He--hadn't--any!"
+
+"Oh, I see--a gentleman of property."
+
+Jeff hesitated, looked at Miss Mayfield hurriedly, colored, and did 
+not reply.
+
+"And lost his property, Mr. Briggs?"  With one of those rare 
+impulses of an overtasked gentle nature, Jeff turned upon her 
+almost savagely.  "My father was a gambler, and shot himself at a 
+gambling table."
+
+Miss Mayfield rose hurriedly.  "I--I beg your pardon, Mr. Jeff."
+
+Jeff was silent.
+
+"You know--you MUST know--I did not mean--"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Mr. Jeff!"
+
+Her little hand fluttered toward him, and lit upon his sleeve, 
+where it was suddenly captured and pressed passionately to his 
+lips.
+
+"I did not mean to be thoughtless or unkind," said Miss Mayfield, 
+discreetly keeping to the point, and trying weakly to disengage her 
+hand.  "You know I wouldn't hurt your feelings."
+
+"I know, Miss Mayfield."  (Another kiss.)
+
+"I was ignorant of your history."
+
+"Yes, miss."  (A kiss.)
+
+"And if I could do anything for you, Mr. Jeff--"  She stopped.
+
+It was a very trying position.  Being small, she was drawn after 
+her hand quite up to Jeff's shoulder, while he, assenting in 
+monosyllables, was parting the fingers, and kissing them 
+separately.  Reasonable discourse in this attitude was out of the 
+question.  She had recourse to strategy.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Miss Mayfield!"
+
+"You hurt my hand."
+
+Jeff dropped it instantly.  Miss Mayfield put it in the pocket of 
+her sacque for security.  Besides, it had been so bekissed that it 
+seemed unpleasantly conscious.
+
+"I wish you would tell me all about yourself," she went on, with a 
+certain charming feminine submission of manner quite unlike her 
+ordinary speech; "I should like to help you.  Perhaps I can.  You 
+know I am quite independent; I mean--"
+
+She paused, for Jeff's face betrayed no signs of sympathetic 
+following.
+
+"I mean I am what people call rich in my own right.  I can do as I 
+please with my own.  If any of your trouble, Mr. Jeff, arises from 
+want of money, or capital; if any consideration of that kind takes 
+you away from your home; if I could save you THAT TROUBLE, and find 
+for you--perhaps a little nearer--that which you are seeking, I 
+would be so glad to do it.  You will find the world very wide, and 
+very cold, Mr. Jeff," she continued, with a certain air of 
+practical superiority quite natural to her, but explicable to her 
+friends and acquaintances only as the consciousness of pecuniary 
+independence; "and I wish you would be frank with me.  Although I 
+am a woman, I know something of business."
+
+"I will be frank with you, miss," said Jeff, turning a colorless 
+face upon her.  "If you was ez rich as the Bank of California, and 
+could throw your money on any fancy or whim that struck you at the 
+moment; if you felt you could buy up any man and woman in 
+California that was willing to be bought up; and if me and my aunt 
+were starving in the road, we wouldn't touch the money that we 
+hadn't earned fairly, and didn't belong to us.  No, miss, I ain't 
+that sort o' man!"
+
+How much of this speech, in its brusqueness and slang, was an echo 
+of Yuba Bill's teaching, how much of it was a part of Jeff's inward 
+weakness, I cannot say.  He saw Miss Mayfield recoil from him.  It 
+added to his bitterness that his thought, for the first time 
+voiced, appeared to him by no means as effective or powerful as he 
+had imagined it would be, but he could not recede from it; and 
+there was the relief that the worst had come, and was over now.
+
+Miss Mayfield took her hand out of her pocket.  "I don't think you 
+quite understand me, Mr. Jeff," she said quietly; "and I HOPE I 
+don't understand you."  She walked stiffly at his side for a few 
+moments, but finally took the other side of the road.  They had 
+both turned, half unconsciously, back again to the "Half-way 
+House."
+
+Jeff felt, like all quarrel-seekers, righteous or unrighteous, the 
+full burden of the fight.  If he could have relieved his mind, and 
+at the next moment leaped upon Yuba Bill's coach, and so passed 
+away--without a further word of explanation--all would have been 
+well.  But to walk back with this girl, whom he had just shaken 
+off, and who must now thoroughly hate him, was something he had not 
+preconceived, in that delightful forecast of the imagination, when 
+we determine what WE shall say and do without the least consideration
+of what may be said or done to us in return.  No quarrel proceeds
+exactly as we expect; people have such a way of behaving illogically!
+And here was Miss Mayfield, who was clearly derelict, and who should
+have acted under that conviction, walking along on the other side of
+the road, trailing the splendor of her parasol in the dust like an
+offended goddess.
+
+They had almost reached the house.  "At what time do you go, Mr. 
+Briggs?" asked the young lady quietly.
+
+"At eleven to-night, by the up stage."
+
+"I expect some friends by that stage--coming with my father."
+
+"My aunt will take good care of them," said Jeff, a little 
+bitterly.
+
+"I have no doubt," responded Miss Mayfield gravely; "but I was not 
+thinking of that.  I had hoped to introduce them to you to-morrow.  
+But I shall not be up so late to-night.  And I had better say 
+good-by to you now."
+
+She extended the unkissed hand.  Jeff took it, but presently let 
+the limp fingers fall through his own.
+
+"I wish you good fortune, Mr. Briggs."
+
+She made a grave little bow, and vanished into the house.  But 
+here, I regret to say, her lady-like calm also vanished.  She 
+upbraided her mother peevishly for obliging her to seek the escort 
+of Mr. Briggs in her necessary exercise, and flung herself with an 
+injured air upon the sofa.
+
+"But I thought you liked this Mr. Briggs.  He seems an accommodating
+sort of person."
+
+"Very accommodating.  Going away just as we are expecting company!"
+
+"Going away?" said Mrs. Mayfield in alarm.  "Surely he must be told 
+that we expect some preparation for our friends?"
+
+"Oh," said Miss Mayfield quickly, "his aunt will arrange THAT."
+
+Mrs. Mayfield, habitually mystified at her daughter's moods, said 
+no more.  She, however, fulfilled her duty conscientiously by 
+rising, throwing a wrap over the young girl, tucking it in at her 
+feet, and having, as it were, drawn a charitable veil over her 
+peculiarities, left her alone.
+
+At half past ten the coach dashed up to the "Half-way House," with 
+a flash of lights and a burst of cheery voices.  Jeff, coming upon 
+the porch, was met by Mr. Mayfield, accompanying a lady and two 
+gentlemen,--evidently the guests alluded to by his daughter.  
+Accustomed as Jeff had become to Mr. Mayfield's patronizing 
+superiority, it seemed unbearable now, and the easy indifference of 
+the guests to his own presence touched him with a new bitterness.  
+Here were HER friends, who were to take his place.  It was a relief 
+to grasp Yuba Bill's large hand and stand with him alone beside the 
+bar.
+
+"I'm ready to go with you to-night, Bill," said Jeff, after a 
+pause.
+
+Bill put down his glass--a sign of absorbing interest.
+
+"And these yar strangers I fetched?"
+
+"Aunty will take care of them.  I've fixed everything."
+
+Bill laid both his powerful hands on Jeff's shoulders, backed him 
+against the wall, and surveyed him with great gravity.
+
+"Briggs's son clar through!  A little off color, but the grit all 
+thar!  Bully for you, Jeff."  He wrung Jeff's hand between his own.
+
+"Bill!" said Jeff hesitatingly.
+
+"Jeff!"
+
+"You wouldn't mind my getting up on the box NOW, before all the 
+folks get round?"
+
+"I reckon not.  Thar's the box-seat all ready for ye."
+
+Climbing to his high perch, Jeff, indistinguishable in the 
+darkness, looked out upon the porch and the moving figures of the 
+passengers, on Bill growling out his orders to his active hostler, 
+and on the twinkling lights of the hotel windows.  In the mystery 
+of the night and the bitterness of his heart, everything looked 
+strange.  There was a light in Miss Mayfield's room, but the 
+curtains were drawn.  Once he thought they moved, but then, fearful 
+of the fascination of watching them, he turned his face resolutely 
+away.
+
+Then, to his relief, the hour came; the passengers re-entered the 
+coach; Bill had mounted the box, and was slowly gathering his 
+reins, when a shrill voice rose from the porch.
+
+"Oh, Jeff!"
+
+Jeff leaned an anxious face out over the coach lamps.
+
+It was Aunt Sally, breathless and on tiptoe, reaching with a 
+letter.  "Suthin' you forgot!"  Then, in a hoarse stage whisper, 
+perfectly audible to every one: "From HER!"
+
+Jeff seized the letter with a burning face.  The whip snapped, and 
+the stage plunged forward into the darkness.  Presently Yuba Bill 
+reached down, coolly detached one of the coach lamps, and handed it 
+to Jeff without a word.
+
+Jeff tore open the envelope.  It contained Cyrus Parker's bill 
+receipted, and the writ.  Another small inclosure contained ten 
+dollars, and a few lines written in pencil in a large masculine 
+business hand.  By the light of the lamp Jeff read as follows:--
+
+
+"I hope you will forgive me for having tried to help you even in 
+this accidental way, before I knew how strong were your objections 
+to help from me.  Nobody knows this but myself.  Even Mr. Dodd 
+thinks my father advanced the money.  The ten dollars the rascal 
+would have kept, but I made him disgorge it.  I did it all while 
+you were looking for the letter in the woods.  Pray forget all 
+about it, and any pain you may have had from J. M."
+
+
+Frank and practical as this letter appeared to be, and, doubtless, 
+as it was intended to be by its writer, the reader will not fail to 
+notice that Miss Mayfield said nothing of having overheard Jeff's 
+quarrel with the deputy, and left him to infer that that 
+functionary had betrayed him.  It was simply one of those 
+unpleasant details not affecting the result, usually overlooked in 
+feminine ethics.
+
+For a moment Jeff sat pale and dumb, crushed under the ruins of his 
+pride and self-love.  For a moment he hated Miss Mayfield, small 
+and triumphant!  How she must have inwardly laughed at his speech 
+that morning!  With what refined cruelty she had saved this 
+evidence of his humiliation, to work her vengeance on him now.  He 
+could not stand it!  He could not live under it!  He would go back 
+and sell the house--his clothes--everything--to pay this wicked, 
+heartless, cruel girl, that was killing--yes, killing--
+
+A strong hand took the swinging-lantern from his unsteady fingers, 
+a strong hand possessed itself of the papers and Miss Mayfield's 
+note, a strong arm was drawn around him,--for his figure was 
+swaying to and fro, his head was giddy, and his hat had fallen 
+off,--and a strong voice, albeit a little husky, whispered in his 
+ear,--
+
+"Easy, boy! easy on the down grade.  It'll be all one in a minit."
+
+Jeff tried to comprehend him, but his brain was whirling.
+
+"Pull yourself together, Jeff!" said Bill, after a pause.  "Thar!  
+Look yar!" he said suddenly.  "Do you think you can drive SIX?"
+
+The words recalled Jeff to his senses.  Bill laid the six reins in 
+his hands.  A sense of life, of activity, of POWER, came back to 
+the young man, as his fingers closed deliciously on the far-
+reaching, thrilling, living leathern sinews that controlled the six 
+horses, and seemed to be instinct and magnetic with their bounding 
+life.  Jeff, leaning back against them, felt the strong youthful 
+tide rush back to his heart, and was himself again.  Bill, 
+meantime, took the lamp, examined the papers, and read Miss 
+Mayfield's note.  A grim smile stole over his face.  After a pause, 
+he said again, "Give Blue Grass her head, Jeff.  D--n it, she ain't 
+Miss Mayfield!"
+
+Jeff relaxed the muscles of his wrists, so as to throw the thumb 
+and forefingers a trifle forward.  This simple action relieved Blue 
+Grass, alias Miss Mayfield, and made the coach steadier and less 
+jerky.  Wonderful co-relation of forces.
+
+"Thar!" said Yuba Bill, quietly putting the coach lamp back in its 
+place; "you're better already.  Thar's nothing like six horses to 
+draw a woman out of a man.  I've knowed a case where it took eight 
+mustangs, but it was a mulatter from New Orleans, and they are 
+pizen!  Ye might hit up a little on the Pinto hoss--he ain't 
+harmin' ye.  So!  Now, Jeff, take your time, and take it easy, 
+and what's all this yer about?"
+
+To control six fiery mustangs, and at the same time give picturesque
+and affecting exposition of the subtle struggles of Love and Pride,
+was a performance beyond Jeff's powers.  He had recourse to an angry
+staccato, which somehow seemed to him as ineffective as his previous
+discourse to Miss Mayfield; he was a little incoherent, and perhaps
+mixed his impressions with his facts, but he nevertheless managed to
+convey to Bill some general idea of the events of the past three
+days.
+
+"And she sent ye off after that letter, that wasn't thar, while she 
+fixed things up with Dodd?"
+
+"Yes," said Jeff furiously.
+
+"Ye needn't bully the Pinto colt, Jeff; he is doin' his level best.  
+And she snaked that ar ten dollars outer Dodd?"
+
+"Yes; and sent it back to ME.  To ME, Bill!  At such a time as 
+this!  As if I was dead broke!--a mere tramp.  As if--"
+
+"In course! in course!" said Bill soothingly, yet turning his head 
+aside to bestow a deceitful smile upon the trees that whirled 
+beside them.  "And ye told her ye didn't want her money?"
+
+"Yes, Bill--but it--it--it was AFTER she had done this!"
+
+"Surely!  I'll take the lines now, Jeff."
+
+He took them.  Jeff relapsed into gloomy silence.  The starlight of 
+that dewless Sierran night was bright and cold and passionless.  
+There was no moon to lead the fancy astray with its faint mysteries 
+and suggestions; nothing but a clear, grayish-blue twilight, with 
+sharply silhouetted shadows, pointed here and there with bright 
+large-spaced constant stars.  The deep breath of the pine-woods, 
+the faint, cool resinous spices of bay and laurel, at last brought 
+surcease to his wounded spirit.  The blessed weariness of exhausted 
+youth stole tenderly on him.  His head nodded, dropped.  Yuba Bill, 
+with a grim smile, drew him to his side, enveloped him in his 
+blanket, and felt his head at last sink upon his own broad 
+shoulder.
+
+A few minutes later the coach drew up at the "Summit House."  Yuba 
+Bill did not dismount, an unusual and disturbing circumstance that 
+brought the bar-keeper to the veranda.
+
+"What's up, old man?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Sworn off your reg'lar pizen?"
+
+"My physician," said Bill gravely, "hez ordered me dry champagne 
+every three hours." 
+
+Nevertheless, the bar-keeper lingered.
+
+"Who's that you're dry-nussin' up there?"
+
+I regret that I may not give Yuba Bill's literal reply.  It 
+suggested a form of inquiry at once distant, indirect, outrageous, 
+and impossible.
+
+The bar-keeper flashed a lantern upon Jeff's curls and his drooping 
+eyelashes and mustaches.
+
+"It's that son o' Briggs o' Tuolumne--pooty boy, ain't he?"
+
+Bill disdained a reply.
+
+"Played himself out down there, I reckon.  Left his rifle here in 
+pawn."
+
+"Young man," said Bill gravely.
+
+"Old man."
+
+"Ef you're looking for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than 
+forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar 
+rifle.  It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard's 
+grave."  With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory 
+passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again 
+upon the road.  The lights of the "Summit House" presently dropped 
+here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees.  Another 
+stretch through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash through 
+the opening, another whirl and rattle by overhanging rocks, and the 
+vehicle was swiftly descending.  Bill put his foot on the brake, 
+threw his reins loosely on the necks of his cattle, and looked 
+leisurely back.  The great mountain was slowly and steadily rising 
+between them and the valley they quitted.
+
+And at that same moment Miss Mayfield had crept from her bed, and, 
+with a shawl around her pretty little figure, was pressing her eyes 
+against a blank window of the "Half-way House," and wondering where 
+HE was now.
+
+
+V.
+
+
+The "opening" suggested by Bill was not a fortunate one.  Possibly 
+views of business openings in the public-house line taken from the 
+tops of stage-coaches are not as judicious as those taken from less 
+exalted levels.  Certain it is that the "goodwill" of the "Lone 
+Star House" promised little more pecuniary value than a conventional
+blessing.  It was in an older and more thickly settled locality than
+the "Half-way House;" indeed, it was but half a mile away from
+Campville, famous in '49--a place with a history and a disaster.
+But young communities are impatient of settlements that through any
+accident fail to fulfil the extravagant promise of their youth, and
+the wounded hamlet of Campville had crept into the woods and died.
+The "Lone Star House" was an attempt to woo the passing travelers
+from another point; but its road led to Campville, and was already
+touched by its dry-rot.  Bill, who honestly conceived that the
+infusion of fresh young blood like Jeff's into the stagnant current
+would quicken it, had to confess his disappointment.  "I thought ye
+could put some go into the shanty, Jeff," said Bill, "and make it
+lively and invitin'!"  But the lack of vitality was not in the
+landlord, but in the guests.  The regular customers were disappointed,
+vacant, hopeless men, who gathered listlessly on the veranda, and
+talked vaguely of the past.  Their hollow-eyed, feeble impotency
+affected the stranger, even as it checked all ambition among
+themselves.  Do what Jeff might, the habits of the locality were
+stronger than his individuality; the dead ghosts of the past
+Campville held their property by invisible mortmain.
+
+In the midst of this struggle the "Half-way House" was sold.  Spite 
+of Bill's prediction, the proceeds barely paid Jeff's debts.  Aunt 
+Sally prevented any troublesome consideration of HER future, by 
+applying a small surplus of profit to the expenses of a journey 
+back to her relatives in Kentucky.  She wrote Jeff a letter of 
+cheerless instruction, reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst 
+prophecies regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely 
+solely upon the "Word."  "For the sperrit killeth," she added 
+vaguely.  Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff's business, he 
+did not stop to consider.  He was more interested in the 
+information that the Mayfields had removed to the "Summit Hotel" 
+two days after he had left.  "She allowed it was for her health's 
+sake," continued Aunt Sally, "but I reckon it's another name for 
+one of them city fellers who j'ined their party and is keepin' 
+company with her now.  They talk o' property and stocks and sich 
+worldly trifles all the time, and it's easy to see their idees is 
+set together.  It's allowed at the Forks that Mr. Mayfield paid 
+Parker's bill for you.  I said it wasn't so, fur ye'd hev told me; 
+but if it is so, Jeff, and ye didn't tell me, it was for only one 
+puppos, and that wos that Mayfield bribed ye to break off with his 
+darter!  That was WHY you went off so suddent, 'like a thief in the 
+night,' and why Miss Mayfield never let on a word about you after 
+you left--not even your name!"
+
+Jeff crushed the letter between his fingers, and, going behind the 
+bar, poured out half a glass of stimulant and drank it.  It was not 
+the first time since he came to the "Lone Star House" that he had 
+found this easy relief from his present thought; it was not the 
+first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift 
+service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, 
+sodden guests, so necessary to his trade.  Jeff had not the excuse 
+of the inborn drunkard's taste.  He was impulsive and extreme.  At 
+the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as 
+Bill drew up.  "You must take me from this place to-night," he 
+said, in a broken voice scarce like his own.  "When we're on the 
+road we can arrange matters, but I must go to-night."
+
+"But where?" asked Bill.
+
+"Anywhere!  Only I must go from here.  I shall go if I have to 
+walk."
+
+Bill looked hard at the young man.  His face was flushed, his eyes 
+blood-shot, and his hands trembled, not with excitement, but with a 
+vacant, purposeless impotence.  Bill looked a little relieved.  
+"You've been drinking too hard.  Jeff, I thought better of ye than 
+that!"
+
+"I think better of MYSELF than that," said Jeff, with a certain 
+wild, half-hysterical laugh, "and that is why I want to go.  Don't 
+be alarmed, Bill," he added; "I have strength enough to save 
+myself, and I shall!  But it isn't worth the struggle HERE."
+
+He left the "Lone Star House" that night.  He would, he said to 
+Bill, go on to Sacramento, and try to get a situation as clerk or 
+porter there; he was too old to learn a trade.  He said little 
+more.  When, after forty-eight hours' inability to eat, drink, or 
+sleep, Bill, looking at his haggard face and staring eyes, pressed 
+him to partake, medicinally, from a certain black bottle, Jeff 
+gently put it aside, and saying, with a sad smile, "I can get along 
+without it; I've gone through more than this," left his mentor in a 
+state of mingled admiration and perplexity.
+
+At Sacramento he found a commercial "opening."  But certain habits 
+of personal independence, combined with a direct truthfulness and 
+simplicity, were not conducive to business advancement.  He was 
+frank, and in his habits impulsive and selfishly outspoken.  His 
+employer, a good-natured man, successful in his way, anxious to 
+serve his own interest and Jeff's equally, strove and labored with 
+him, but in vain.  His employer's wife, a still more good-natured 
+woman, successful in her way, and equally anxious to serve Jeff's 
+interests and her own, also strove with him as unsuccessfully.  At 
+the end of a month he discharged his employer, after a simple, 
+boyish, utterly unbusiness-like interview, and secretly tore up his 
+wife's letter.  "I don't know what to make of that chap," said the 
+husband to his wife; "he's about as civilized as an Injun."  "And 
+as conceited," added the lady.
+
+Howbeit he took his conceit, his sorrows, his curls, mustaches, 
+broad shoulders, and fifty dollars into humble lodgings in a back 
+street.  The days succeeding this were the most restful he had 
+passed since he left the "Half-way House."  To wander through the 
+town, half conscious of its strangeness and novel bustling life, 
+and to dream of a higher and nobler future with Miss Mayfield--to 
+feel no responsibility but that of waiting--was, I regret to say, a 
+pleasure to him.  He made no acquaintances except among the poorer 
+people and the children.  He was sometimes hungry, he was always 
+poorly clad, but these facts carried no degradation with them now.  
+He read much, and in his way--Jeff's way--tried to improve his 
+mind; his recent commercial experience had shown him various 
+infelicities in his speech and accent.  He learned to correct 
+certain provincialisms.  He was conscious that Miss Mayfield must 
+have noticed them, yet his odd irrational pride kept him from ever 
+regretting them, if they had offered a possible excuse for her 
+treatment of him.
+
+On one of these nights his steps chanced to lead him into a 
+gambling-saloon.  The place had offered no temptation to him; his 
+dealings with the goddess Chance had been of less active nature.  
+Nevertheless he placed his last five dollars on the turn of a card.  
+He won.  He won repeatedly; his gains had reached a considerable 
+sum when, flushed, excited, and absorbed, he was suddenly conscious 
+that he had become the centre of observation at the table.  Looking 
+up, he saw that the dealer had paused, and, with the cards in his 
+motionless fingers, was gazing at him with fixed eyes and a white 
+face.
+
+Jeff rose and passed hurriedly to his side.  "What's the matter?"
+
+The gambler shrunk slightly as he approached.  "What's your name?"
+
+"Briggs."
+
+"God! I knew it!  How much have you got there?" he continued, in a 
+quick whisper, pointing to Jeff's winnings.
+
+"Five hundred dollars."
+
+"I'll give you double if you'll get up and quit the board!"
+
+"Why?" asked Jeff haughtily.
+
+"Why?" repeated the man fiercely; "why?  Well, your father shot 
+himself thar, where you're sittin', at this table;" and he added, 
+with a half-forced, half-hysterical laugh, "HE'S PLAYIN' AT ME OVER 
+YOUR SHOULDERS!"
+
+Jeff lifted a face as colorless as the gambler's own, went back 
+to his seat, and placed his entire gains on a single card.  The 
+gambler looked at him nervously, but dealt.  There was a pause, a 
+slight movement where Jeff stood, and then a simultaneous cry from 
+the players as they turned towards him.  But his seat was vacant.  
+"Run after him!  Call him back!  HE'S WON AGAIN!"  But he had 
+vanished utterly.
+
+HOW he left, or what indeed followed, he never clearly remembered.  
+His movements must have been automatic, for when, two hours later, 
+he found himself at the "Pioneer" coach office, with his carpet-bag 
+and blankets by his side, he could not recall how or why he had 
+come!  He had a dumb impression that he had barely escaped some 
+dire calamity,--rather that he had only temporarily averted it,--
+and that he was still in the shadow of some impending catastrophe 
+of destiny.  He must go somewhere, he must do something to be 
+saved!  He had no money, he had no friends; even Yuba Bill had been 
+transferred to another route, miles away.  Yet, in the midst of 
+this stupefaction, it was a part of his strange mental condition 
+that trivial details of Miss Mayfield's face and figure, and 
+even apparel, were constantly before him, to the exclusion of 
+consecutive thought.  A collar she used to wear, a ribbon she had 
+once tied around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a 
+curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step 
+in her small boots--all these were plainer to him than the future, 
+or even the present.  But a voice in his ear, a figure before his 
+abstracted eyes, at last broke upon his reverie.
+
+"Jeff Briggs!"
+
+Jeff mechanically took the outstretched hand of a young clerk of 
+the Pioneer Coach Company, who had once accompanied Yuba Bill and 
+stopped at the "Half-way House."  He endeavored to collect his 
+thoughts; here seemed to be an opportunity to go somewhere!
+
+"What are you doing now?" said the young man briskly.
+
+"Nothing," said Jeff simply.
+
+"Oh, I see--going home!"
+
+Home! the word stung sharply through Jeff's benumbed consciousness.
+
+"No," he stammered, "that is--"
+
+"Look here, Jeff," broke in the young man, "I've got a chance for 
+you that don't fall in a man's way every day.  Wells, Fargo & Co.'s 
+treasure messenger from Robinson's Ferry to Mempheys has slipped 
+out.  The place is vacant.  I reckon I can get it for you."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now--to-night."
+
+"I'm ready."
+
+"Come, then."
+
+In ten minutes they were in the company's office, where its manager,
+a man famous in those days for his boldness and shrewdness, still
+lingered in the dispatch of business.
+
+The young clerk briefly but deferentially stated certain facts.  
+A few questions and answers followed, of which Jeff heard only the 
+words "Tuolumne" and "Yuba Bill."
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Briggs.  Good-night, Roberts."
+
+The young clerk, with an encouraging smile at Jeff, bowed himself 
+out as the manager seated himself at his desk and began to write.
+
+"You know the country pretty well between the Fork and the Summit, 
+Mr. Briggs?" he said, without looking up.
+
+"I lived there," said Jeff.
+
+"That was some months ago, wasn't it?"
+
+"Six months," said Jeff, with a sigh.
+
+"It's changed for the worse since your house was shut up.  There's 
+a long stretch of unsettled country infested by bad characters."
+
+Jeff sat silent.  "Briggs."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"The last man but one who preceded you was shot by road agents."*
+
+
+* Highway robbers.
+
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"We lost sixty thousand dollars up there."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Your father was Briggs of Tuolumne?"
+
+"Yes, sir."  Jeff's head dropped, but, glancing shyly up, he saw a 
+pleasant smile on his questioner's face.  He was still writing 
+rapidly, but was apparently enjoying at the same time some pleasant 
+recollection.
+
+"Your father and I lost nearly sixty thousand dollars together one 
+night, ten years ago, when we were both younger."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Jeff dubiously.
+
+"But it was OUR OWN MONEY, Jeff."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Here's your appointment," he said briefly, throwing away his pen, 
+folding what he had written, and handing it to Jeff.  It was the 
+first time that he had looked at him since he entered.  He now held 
+out his hand, grasped Jeff's, and said, "Good-night!"
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+It was late the next evening when Jeff drew up at the coach office 
+at Robinson's Ferry, where he was to await the coming of the Summit 
+coach.  His mind, lifted only temporarily out of its denumbed 
+condition during his interview with the manager, again fell back 
+into its dull abstraction.  Fully embarked upon his dangerous 
+journey, accepting all the meaning of the trust imposed upon him, 
+he was yet vaguely conscious that he did not realize its full 
+importance.  He had neither the dread nor the stimulation of coming 
+danger.  He had faced death before in the boyish confidence of 
+animal spirits; his pulse now was scarcely stirred with anticipation.
+Once or twice before, in the extravagance of his passion, he had
+imagined himself rescuing Miss Mayfield from danger, or even dying
+for her.  During his journey his mind had dwelt fully and minutely
+on every detail of their brief acquaintance; she was continually
+before him, the tones of her voice were in his ears, the suggestive
+touch of her fingers, the thrill that his lips had felt when he
+kissed them--all were with him now, but only as a memory.  In his
+coming fate, in his future life, he saw her not.  He believed it was
+a premonition of coming death.
+
+He made a few preparations.  The company's agent had told him that 
+the treasure, letters, and dispatches, which had accumulated to a 
+considerable amount, would be handed to him on the box; and that 
+the arms and ammunition were in the boot.  A less courageous and 
+determined man might have been affected by the cold, practical 
+brutality of certain advice and instructions offered him by the 
+agent, but Jeff recognized this compliment to his determination, 
+even before the agent concluded his speech by saying, "But I reckon 
+they knew what they were about in the lower office when they sent 
+YOU up.  I dare say you kin give me p'ints, ef ye cared to, for all 
+ye're soft spoken.  There are only four passengers booked through; 
+we hev to be a little partikler, suspectin' spies!  Two of the four 
+ye kin depend upon to get the top o' their d----d heads blowed off 
+the first fire," he added grimly.
+
+At ten o'clock the Summit coach flashed, rattled, glittered, and 
+snapped, like a disorganized firework, up to the door of the 
+company's office.  A familiar figure, but more than usually 
+truculent and aggressive, slowly descended with violent oaths from 
+the box.  Without seeing Jeff, it strode into the office.
+
+"Now then," said Yuba Bill, addressing the agent, "whar's that God-
+forsaken fool that Wells, Fargo & Co. hev sent up yar to take 
+charge o' their treasure?  Because I'd like to introduce him to the 
+champion idgit of Calaveras County, that's been selected to go to 
+h-ll with him; and that's me, Yuba Bill!  P'int him out.  Don't 
+keep me waitin'!"
+
+The agent grinned and pointed to Jeff.
+
+Both men recoiled in astonishment.  Yuba Bill was the first to 
+recover his speech.
+
+"It's a lie!" he roared; "or somebody has been putting up a job on 
+ye, Jeff!  Because I've been twenty years in the service, and am 
+such a nat'ral born mule that when the company strokes my back and 
+sez, 'You're the on'y mule we kin trust, Bill,' I starts up and 
+goes out as a blasted wooden figgerhead for road agents to lay fur 
+and practice on, it don't follow that YOU'VE any call to go."
+
+"It was my own seeking, Bill," said Jeff, with one of his old, 
+sweet, boyish smiles.  "I didn't know YOU were to drive.  But 
+you're not going back on me now, Bill, are you? you're not going to 
+send me off with another volunteer?"
+
+"That be d----d!" growled Bill.  Nevertheless, for ten minutes he 
+reviled the Pioneer Coach Company with picturesque imprecation, 
+tendered his resignation repeatedly to the agent, and at the end of 
+that time, as everybody expected, mounted the box, and with a final 
+malediction, involving the whole settlement, was off.
+
+On the road, Jeff, in a few hurried sentences, told his story.  
+Bill scarcely seemed to listen.  "Look yar, Jeff," he said 
+suddenly.
+
+"Yes, Bill."
+
+"If the worst happens, and ye go under, you'll tell your father, IF 
+I DON'T HAPPEN TO SEE HIM FIRST, it wasn't no job of mine, and I 
+did my best to get ye out of it."
+
+"Yes," said Jeff, in a faint voice.
+
+"It mayn't be so bad," said Bill, softening; "they KNOW, d--n 'em, 
+we've got a pile aboard, ez well as if they seed that agent gin it 
+ye, but they also know we've pre-pared!"
+
+"I wasn't thinking of that, Bill; I was thinking of my father."  
+And he told Bill of the gambling episode at Sacramento.
+
+"D'ye mean to say ye left them hounds with a thousand dollars of 
+yer hard-earned--"
+
+"Gambling gains, Bill," interrupted Jeff quietly.
+
+"Exactly!  Well!"  Bill subsided into an incoherent growl.  After a 
+few moments' pause, he began again.  "Yer ready as ye used to be 
+with a six-shooter, Jeff, time's when ye was a boy, and I uster 
+chuck half-dollars in the air fur ye to make warts on?"
+
+"I reckon," said Jeff, with a faint smile.
+
+"Thar's two p'ints on the road to be looked to: the woods beyond 
+the blacksmith's shop that uster be; the fringe of alder and 
+buckeye by the crossing below your house--p'ints where they kin 
+fetch you without a show.  Thar's two ways o' meetin' them thar.  
+One way ez to pull up and trust to luck and brag.  The other way is 
+to whip up and yell, and send the whole six kiting by like h-ll!"
+
+"Yes," said Jeff.
+
+"The only drawback to that plan is this: the road lies along the 
+edge of a precipice, straight down a thousand feet into the river.  
+Ef these devils get a shot into any one o' the six and it DROPS, 
+the coach turns sharp off, and down we go, the whole kerboodle of 
+us, plump into the Stanislaus!"
+
+"AND THEY DON'T GET THE MONEY," said Jeff quietly.
+
+"Well, no!" replied Yuba Bill, staring at Jeff, whose face was set 
+as a flint against the darkness.  "I should reckon not."  He then 
+drew a long breath, glanced at Jeff again, and said between his 
+teeth, "Well, I'm d----d!"
+
+At the next station they changed horses, Bill personally supervising,
+especially as regarded the welfare and proper condition of Blue
+Grass, who here was brought out as a leader.  Formerly there was no
+change of horses at this station, and this novelty excited Jeff's
+remark.  "These yar chaps say thar's no station at the Summit now,"
+growled Bill, in explanation; "the hotel is closed, and it's all
+private property, bought by some chap from 'Frisco.  Thar ought to
+be a law agin such doin's!"
+
+This suggested obliteration of the last traces of Miss Mayfield 
+seemed to Jeff as only a corroboration of his premonition.  He 
+should never hear from her again!  Yet to have stood under the roof 
+that last sheltered her; to, perchance, have met some one who had 
+seen her later--this was a fancy that had haunted him on his 
+journey.  It was all over now.  Perhaps it was for the best.
+
+With the sinking behind of the lights of the station, the occupants 
+of the coach knew that the dangerous part of the journey had begun.  
+The two guards in the coach had already made obtrusive and warlike 
+preparations, to the ill-concealed disgust of Yuba Bill.  "I'd hev 
+been willin' to get through this yar job without the burnin' of 
+powder, but ef any of them devils ez is waitin' for us would be 
+content with a shot at them fancy policemen inside, I'd pull up and 
+give 'em a show!"  Having relieved his mind, Bill said no more, and 
+the two men relapsed into silence.  The moon shone brightly and 
+peacefully, a fact pointed out by Bill as unfavorably deepening the 
+shadows of the woods, and bringing the coach and the road into 
+greater relief.
+
+An hour passed.  What were Yuba Bill's thoughts are not a part of 
+this history; that they were turbulent and aggressive might be 
+inferred from the occasional growls and interjected oaths that 
+broke from his lips.  But Jeff, strange anomaly, due perhaps to 
+youth and moonlight, was wrapped in a sensuous dream of Miss 
+Mayfield, of the scent of her dark hair as he had drawn her to his 
+side, of the outlines of her sweet form, that had for a moment 
+lightly touched his own--of anything, I fear, but the death he 
+believed he was hastening to.  But--
+
+"Jeff," said Bill, in an unmistakable tone.
+
+"Yes," said Jeff.
+
+"THAT AR CLUMP O' BUCKEYE ON THE RIDGE!  Ready there!"  (Leaning 
+over the box, to the guards within.)  A responsive rustle in the 
+coach, which now bounded forward as if instinct with life and 
+intelligence.
+
+"Jeff," said Bill, in an odd, altered voice, "take the lines a 
+minit."  Jeff took them.  Bill stooped towards the boot.  A 
+peaceful moment!  A peaceful outlook from the coach; the white 
+moonlit road stretching to the ridge, no noise but the steady 
+gallop of the horses!
+
+Then a yellow flash, breaking from the darkness of the buckeye; a 
+crack like the snap of a whip; Yuba Bill steadying himself for a 
+moment, and then dropping at Jeff's feet!
+
+"They got me, Jeff!  But--I DRAWED THEIR FIRE!  Don't drop the 
+lines!  Don't speak!  For--they--think I'm YOU and you ME!"
+
+The flash had illuminated Jeff as to the danger, as to Bill's 
+sacrifice, but above all, and overwhelming all, to a thrilling 
+sense of his own power and ability.
+
+Yet he sat like a statue.  Six masked figures had appeared from 
+the very ground, clinging to the bits of the horses.  The coach 
+stopped.  Two wild purposeless shots--the first and last fired by 
+the guards--were answered by the muzzle of six rifles pointed into 
+the windows, and the passengers foolishly and impotently filed out 
+into the road.
+
+"Now, Bill," said a voice, which Jeff instantly recognized as the 
+blacksmith's, "we won't keep ye long.  So hand down the treasure."
+
+The man's foot was on the wheel; in another instant he would be 
+beside Jeff, and discovery was certain.  Jeff leaned over and 
+unhooked the coach lamp, as if to assist him with its light.  As if 
+in turning, he STUMBLED, broke the lamp, ignited the kerosene, and 
+scattered the wick and blazing fluid over the haunches of the 
+wheelers!  The maddened animals gave one wild plunge forwards, the 
+coach followed twice its length, throwing the blacksmith under its 
+wheels, and driving the other horses towards the bank.  But as the 
+lamp broke in Jeff's right hand, his practiced left hand discharged 
+its hidden Derringer at the head of the robber who had held the bit 
+of Blue Grass, and, throwing the useless weapon away, he laid the 
+whip smartly on her back.  She leaped forward madly, dragging the 
+other leaders with her, and in the next moment they were free and 
+wildly careering down the grade.
+
+A dozen shots followed them.  The men were protected by the coach, 
+but Yuba Bill groaned.
+
+"Are you hit again?" asked Jeff hastily.  He had forgotten his 
+saviour.
+
+"No; but the horses are!  I felt 'em!  Look at 'em, Jeff."
+
+Jeff had gathered up the almost useless reins.  The horses were 
+running away; but Blue Grass was limping.
+
+"For God's sake," said Bill, desperately dragging his wounded 
+figure above the dash-board, "keep her up!  LIFT HER UP, Jeff, 
+till we pass the curve.  Don't let her drop, or we're--"
+
+"Can you hold the reins?" said Jeff quickly.
+
+"Give 'em here!"
+
+Jeff passed them to the wounded man.  Then, with his bowie-knife 
+between his teeth, he leaped over the dash-board on the backs of 
+the wheelers.  He extinguished the blazing drops that the wind had 
+not blown out of their smarting haunches, and with the skill and 
+instinct of a Mexican vaquero, made his way over their turbulent 
+tossing backs to Blue Grass, cut her traces and reins, and as the 
+vehicle neared the curve, with a sharp lash, drove her to the bank, 
+where she sank even as the coach darted by.  Bill uttered a feeble 
+"Hurrah!" but at the same moment the reins dropped from his 
+fingers, and he sank at the bottom of the boot.
+
+Riding postilion-wise, Jeff could control the horses.  The 
+dangerous curve was passed, but not the possibility of pursuit.  
+The single leader he was bestriding was panting--more than that, 
+he was SWEATING, and from the evidence of Jeff's hands, sweating 
+BLOOD!  Back of his shoulder was a jagged hole, from which his 
+life-blood was welling.  The off-wheel horse was limping too.  That 
+last volley was no foolish outburst of useless rage, but was 
+deliberate and premeditated skill.  Jeff drew the reins, and as the 
+coach stopped, the horse he was riding fell dead.  Into the silence 
+that followed broke the measured beat of horses' hoofs on the road 
+above.  He was pursued!
+
+To select the best horse of the remaining unscathed three, to break 
+open the boot and place the treasure on his back, and to abandon 
+and leave the senseless Bill lying there, was the unhesitating work 
+of a moment.  Great heroes and great lovers are invariably one-
+ideaed men, and Jeff was at that moment both.
+
+Eighty thousand dollars in gold-dust and Jeff's weight was a 
+handicap.  Nevertheless he flew forward like the wind.  Presently 
+he fell to listening.  A certain hoof-beat in the rear was growing 
+more distinct.  A bitter thought flashed through his mind.  He 
+looked back.  Over the hill appeared the foremost of his pursuers.  
+It was the blacksmith, mounted on the fleetest horse in the county--
+Jeff's OWN horse--Rabbit!
+
+But there are compensations in all new trials.  As Jeff faced round 
+again, he saw he had reached the open table-land, and the bleak 
+walls and ghastly, untenanted windows of the "Half-way House" rose 
+before him in the distance.  Jeff was master of the ground here!  
+He was entering the shadow of the woods--Miss Mayfield's woods! and 
+there was a cut off from the road, and a bridle-path, known only to 
+himself, hard by.  To find it, leap the roadside ditch, dash 
+through the thicket, and rein up by the road again, was swiftly 
+done.
+
+Take a gentle woman, betray her trust, outrage her best feelings, 
+drive her into a corner, and you have a fury!  Take a gentle, 
+trustful man, abuse him, show him the folly of this gentleness and 
+kindness, prove to him that it is weakness, drive him into a 
+corner, and you have a savage!  And it was this savage, with an 
+Indian's memory, and an Indian's eye and ear, that suddenly 
+confronted the blacksmith.
+
+What more!  A single shot from a trained hand and one-ideaed 
+intellect settled the blacksmith's business, and temporarily ended 
+this Iliad!  I say temporarily, for Mr. Dodd, formerly deputy-
+sheriff, prudently pulled up at the top of the hill, and observing 
+his principal bend his head forwards and act like a drunken man, 
+until he reeled, limp and sideways, from the saddle, and noticing 
+further that Jeff took his place with a well-filled saddle-bag, 
+concluded to follow cautiously and unobtrusively in the rear.
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+But Jeff saw him not.  With mind and will bent on one object--to 
+reach the first habitation, the "Summit," and send back help and 
+assistance to his wounded comrade--he urged Rabbit forward.  The 
+mare knew her rider, but he had no time for caresses.  Through the 
+smarting of his hands he had only just noticed that they were badly 
+burned, and the skin was peeling from them; he had confounded the 
+blood that was flowing from a cut on his scalp, with that from the 
+wounded horse.  It was one hour yet to the "Summit," but the road 
+was good, the moon was bright, he knew what Rabbit could do, and it 
+was not yet ten o'clock.
+
+As the white outbuildings and irregular outlines of the "Summit 
+House" began to be visible, Jeff felt a singular return of his 
+former dreamy abstraction.  The hour of peril, anger, and 
+excitement he had just passed through seemed something of years 
+ago, or rather to be obliterated with all else that had passed 
+since he had looked upon that scene.  Yet it was all changed--
+strangely changed!  What Jeff had taken for the white, wooden barns 
+and outhouses were greenhouses and conservatories.  The "Summit 
+Hotel" was a picturesque villa, nestling in the self-same trees, 
+but approached through cultivated fields, dwellings of laborers, 
+parklike gates and walls, and all the bountiful appointments of 
+wealth and security.  Jeff thought of Yuba Bill's malediction, and 
+understood it as he gazed.
+
+The barking of dogs announced his near approach to the principal 
+entrance.  Lights were still burning in the upper windows of the 
+house and its offices.  He was at once surrounded by the strange 
+medley of a Californian ranchero's service, peons, Chinese, and 
+vaqueros.  Jeff briefly stated his business.  "Ah, Carrajo!"  This 
+was a matter for the major-domo, or, better, the padrone--Wilson!  
+But the padrone, Wilson, called out by the tumult, appeared in 
+person--a handsome, resolute, middle-aged man, who, in a twinkling, 
+dispersed the group to barn and stable with a dozen orders of 
+preparation, and then turned to Jeff.
+
+"You are hurt; come in."
+
+Jeff followed him dazedly into the house.  The same sense of remote 
+abstraction, of vague dreaminess, was overcoming him.  He resented 
+it, and fought against it, but in vain; he was only half conscious 
+that his host had bathed his head and given him some slight 
+restorative, had said something to him soothingly, and had left 
+him.  Jeff wondered if he had fainted, or was about to faint,--he 
+had a nervous dread of that womanish weakness,--or if he were 
+really hurt worse than he believed.  He tried to master himself and 
+grasp the situation by minutely examining the room.  It was 
+luxuriously furnished; Jeff had but once before sat in such an arm-
+chair as the one that half embraced him, and as a boy he had dim 
+recollections of a life like this, of which his father was part.  
+To poor Jeff, with his throbbing head, his smarting hands, and his 
+lapsing moments of half forgetfulness, this seemed to be a return 
+of his old premonition.  There was a vague perfume in the room, 
+like that which he remembered when he was in the woods with Miss 
+Mayfield.  He believed he was growing faint again, and was about to 
+rise, when the door opened behind him.
+
+"Is there anything we can do for you?  Mr. Wilson has gone to seek 
+your friend, and has sent Manuel for a doctor."
+
+HER voice!  He rose hurriedly, turned; SHE was standing in the 
+doorway!
+
+She uttered a slight cry, turned very pale, advanced towards him, 
+stopped and leaned against the chimney-piece.
+
+"I didn't know it was YOU."
+
+With her actual presence Jeff's dream and weakness fled.  He rose 
+up before her, his old bashful, stammering, awkward self.
+
+"I didn't know YOU lived here, Miss Mayfield."
+
+"If you had sent word you were coming," said Miss Mayfield, 
+recovering her color brightly in one cheek.
+
+The possibility of having sent a messenger in advance to advise 
+Miss Mayfield of his projected visit did not strike Jeff as 
+ridiculous.  Your true lover is far beyond such trivialities.  
+He accepted the rebuke meekly.  He said he was sorry.
+
+"You might have known it."
+
+"What, Miss Mayfield?"
+
+"That I was here, if you WISHED to know."
+
+Jeff did not reply.  He bowed his head and clasped his burned hands 
+together.  Miss Mayfield saw their raw surfaces, saw the ugly cut 
+on his head, pitied him, but went on hastily, with both cheeks 
+burning, to say, womanlike, what was then deepest in her heart:
+
+"My brother-in-law told me your adventure; but I did not know until 
+I entered this room that the gentleman I wished to help was one who 
+had once rejected my assistance, who had misunderstood me, and 
+cruelly insulted me!  Oh, forgive me, Mr. Briggs"  (Jeff had 
+risen).  "I did not mean THAT.  But, Mr. Jeff--Jeff--oh!"  (She had 
+caught his tortured hand and had wrung a movement of pain from 
+him.)  "Oh, dear! what did I do now?  But Mr. Jeff, after what has 
+passed, after what you said to me when you went away, when you were 
+at that dreadful place, Campville, when you were two months in 
+Sacramento, you might--YOU OUGHT TO HAVE LET ME KNOW IT!"
+
+Jeff turned.  Her face, more beautiful than he had ever seen it, 
+alive and eloquent with every thought that her woman's speech but 
+half expressed, was very near his--so near, that under her honest 
+eyes the wretched scales fell from his own, his self-wrought 
+shackles crumbled away, and he dropped upon his knees at her feet 
+as she sank into the chair he had quitted.  Both his hands were 
+grasped in her own.
+
+"YOU went away, and I STAYED," she said reflectively.
+
+"I had no home, Miss Mayfield."
+
+"Nor had I.  I had to buy this," she said, with a delicious 
+simplicity; "and bring a family here too," she added, "in case 
+YOU"--she stopped, with a slight color.
+
+"Forgive me," said Jeff, burying his face in her hands.
+
+"Jeff."
+
+"Jessie."
+
+"Don't you think you were a LITTLE--just a little--mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Miss Mayfield uttered a faint sigh.  He looked into her anxious 
+cheeks and eyes, his arm stole round her; their lips met for the 
+first time in one long lingering kiss.  Then, I fear, for the 
+second time.
+
+"Jeff," said Miss Mayfield, suddenly becoming practical and sweetly 
+possessory, "you must have your hands bound up in cotton."
+
+"Yes," said Jeff cheerfully.
+
+"And you must go instantly to bed."
+
+Jeff stared.
+
+"Because my sister will think it very late for me to be sitting up 
+with a gentleman."
+
+The idea that Miss Mayfield was responsible to anybody was something
+new to Jeff.  But he said hastily, "I must stay and wait for Bill.
+He risked his life for me."
+
+"Oh, yes!  You must tell me all about it.  I may wait for THAT!"
+
+Jeff possessed himself of the chair; in some way he also possessed 
+himself of Miss Mayfield without entirely dispossessing her.  Then 
+he told his story.  He hesitated over the episode of the blacksmith.
+"I'm afraid I killed him, Jessie."
+
+Miss Mayfield betrayed little concern at this possible extreme 
+measure with a dangerous neighbor.  "He cut your head, Jeff," she 
+said, passing her little hand through his curls.
+
+"No," said Jeff hastily, "that must have been done BEFORE."
+
+"Well," said Miss Mayfield conclusively, "he would if he'd dared.  
+And you brought off that wretched money in spite of him.  Poor dear 
+Jeff."
+
+"Yes," said Jeff, kissing her.
+
+"Where is it?" asked Jessie, looking round the room.
+
+"Oh, just out there!"
+
+"Out where?"
+
+"On my horse, you know, outside the door," continued Jeff, a little 
+uneasily, as he rose.  "I'll go and--"
+
+"You careless boy," said Miss Mayfield, jumping up, "I'll go with 
+you."
+
+They passed out on the porch together, holding each other's hands, 
+like children.  The forgotten Rabbit was not there.  Miss Mayfield 
+called a vaquero.
+
+"Ah, yes!--the caballero's horse.  Of a certainty the other 
+caballero had taken it!"
+
+"The other caballero!" gasped Jeff.
+
+"Si, senor.  The one who arrived with you, or a moment, the very 
+next moment, after you.  'Your friend,' he said."
+
+Jeff staggered against the porch, and cast one despairing 
+reproachful look at Miss Mayfield.
+
+"Oh, Jeff! Jeff! don't look so.  I know I ought not to have kept 
+you!  It's a mistake, Jeff, believe me."
+
+"It's no mistake," said Jeff hoarsely.  "Go!" he said, turning to 
+the vaquero, "go!--bring--"  But his speech failed.  He attempted 
+to gesticulate with his hands, ran forward a few steps, staggered, 
+and fell fainting on the ground.
+
+"Help me with the caballero into the blue room," said Miss 
+Mayfield, white as Jeff.  "And hark ye, Manuel!  You know every 
+ruffian, man or woman, on this road.  That horse and those saddle-
+bags must be here to-morrow, if you have to pay DOUBLE WHAT THEY'RE 
+WORTH!"
+
+"Si, senora."
+
+Jeff went off into fever, into delirium, into helpless stupor.  
+From time to time he moaned "Bill" and "the treasure."  On the 
+third day, in a lucid interval, as he lay staring at the wall, Miss 
+Mayfield put in his hand a letter from the company, acknowledging 
+the receipt of the treasure, thanking him for his zeal, and 
+inclosing a handsome check.
+
+Jeff sat up, and put his hands to his head.
+
+"I told you it was taken by mistake, and was easily found," said 
+Miss Mayfield, "didn't I?"
+
+"Yes,--and Bill?"
+
+"You know he is so much better that he expects to leave us next 
+week."
+
+"And--Jessie!"
+
+"There--go to sleep!"
+
+At the end of a week she introduced Jeff to her sister-in-law, 
+having previously run her fingers through his hair to insure that 
+becomingness to his curls which would better indicate his moral 
+character; and spoke of him as one of her oldest Californian 
+friends.
+
+At the end of two weeks she again presented him as her affianced 
+husband--a long engagement of a year being just passed.  Mr. 
+Wilson, who was bored by the mountain life, undertaken to please 
+his rich wife and richer sister, saw a chance of escape here, and 
+bore willing testimony to the distant Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield of the 
+excellence of Miss Jessie's choice.  And Yuba Bill was Jeff's best 
+man.
+
+The name of Briggs remained a power in Tuolumne and Calaveras 
+County.  Mr. and Mrs. Briggs never had but one word of disagreement 
+or discussion.  One day, Jeff, looking over some old accounts of 
+his wife's, found an unreceipted, unvouched for expenditure of 
+twenty thousand dollars.  "What is this for, Jessie?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, it's all right, Jeff!"
+
+But here the now business-like and practical Mr. Briggs, father of 
+a family, felt called upon to make some general remarks regarding 
+the necessity of exactitude in accounts, etc.
+
+"But I'd rather not tell you, Jeff."
+
+"But you ought to, Jessie."
+
+"Well then, dear, it was to get those saddle-bags of yours from 
+that rascal, Dodd," said little Mrs. Briggs meekly.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte
+
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