The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

PART II.

CHAPTER I.
FANNY AND ROY.

The October sun was shining brightly into the windows of a handsome drawing room in New York, where two young people were talking earnestly together. The girl was scarcely twenty and looked younger. She was short and slight and dainty and sweet, with beautiful blue eyes which laughed when she laughed and gave a wonderful brightness to her face. There was something peculiar in their expression which was rapid and searching and made the young man beside her wonder if what they saw in him boded good or ill to his suit. He was twenty-two, tall and straight and broad shouldered, with something in his voice and features and manner which reminded one of the July morning twenty-three years before when Craig Mason sat on the north piazza of the Prospect House and talked to Alice Tracy. To one who had been in Ridgefield that summer there would have come back the scent of the new mown hay and the perfume of the white pond lilies Alice wore in her belt, and in the young man’s eyes he would have seen a likeness to Alice’s eyes, with thicker lashes and heavier brows.

After this the reader scarcely need be told that the young man was the son of Craig and Alice, born abroad where his parents had spent much of their time since their marriage, with occasional visits to America. Alice had been delighted with the old world, and as Craig’s health was better there they had staid on and on,—sometimes in Paris where their son Roy was born, sometimes in Switzerland, sometimes in Italy, and once for a winter in Cairo, and again in London, where Craig’s mother died. They had brought her back to Boston, and tired of wandering with no particular home, had decided to settle down quietly for a time at least. But not in the house Craig had looked at for himself and Helen. Nothing could have induced him to take that at any price. He preferred his mother’s old home, which, if not in so fashionable a part of the city, was dear to him for its associations with his boyhood and manhood and mother. Here they had lived for three years, two of which Roy had spent at Harvard, where he had entered as a Junior, studying hard in order to be graduated with honor, and still managing to join in a good many athletic sports and to fall in love with his pretty half cousin, Fanny Prescott, a pupil in a private school. She had thought him a boy at first and played with and teased him unmercifully, now sending him from her in a rage and then luring him back with a trick of her eyes which we have seen before. She had not inherited all her mother’s dazzling beauty and but little of her nature. In her frankness and perfect truthfulness she resembled Alice. Her Sundays when at school had been spent with the Masons, and thus Roy had every facility for falling in love with her. But while she kept him at fever heat with her innocent coquetries she gave him no encouragement. Once, when he said, “I must and will speak seriously to you,” she called him a big boy and told him to wait till he had his diploma and a mustache. He had them both now; the mustache was a very small one, which some might think did not add to his face. The diploma, received in June, was en regle, and he had come for the serious talk.

He had not seen her since May, at which time she had been called home by the sudden illness and death of her father, Judge Prescott. As it was so near the close of the term she had not returned to school, but had spent the summer with her mother at a quiet place among the Adirondacks. She did not know that he was coming but was glad to see him, and led him to a sofa on which they both sat down. Then her manner changed suddenly to one of shyness and almost shamefacedness as she moved away from him and put a sofa cushion between them. She was in mourning for her father and the black brought out the purity of her complexion and the brightness of her eyes which filled with tears when Roy spoke of her father and his grief when he heard he was dead.

“Don’t talk of him. I can’t bear it yet. Talk of something else, please,” she said, and Roy plunged at once into the object of his visit, reminding her that he had his diploma and his mustache, and now he wanted her love.

“Oh, Roy, it’s too bad in you to spoil our good times as friends. As lovers we might quarrel, and then we are cousins,” she said.

“Only seconds, which does not count,” Roy answered, moving nearer to her, while she put another cushion between them so that only her shoulders and head were visible.

Roy was of a more ardent nature than his father, and there was no stiffness or hesitancy in his wooing when once he was fairly under way.

“You can pile up the cushions till I can’t see you at all,” he said, “but it will not prevent you from hearing me tell you that I love you and have ever since I saw you in short dresses, with your hair down your back.”

For a time Fanny listened with her face bent down, and when she turned it to him there was a troubled look upon it and her lips quivered as she said, “I do care for you, Roy, and always have; but I must not any more. You will not want me to either when you know what I do.”

“What do you know?” he asked, beginning to slide his hand under the cushions.

“Have you never heard anything bad about me or mother?” she asked, and Roy answered, with so sudden a movement that one of the cushions fell to the floor.

“Bad about you, or your mother? Never. I would have thrashed any one who insinuated anything against you. What do you mean?”

“I am not Fanny Prescott,” the girl said with a sob in her voice.

“The deuce you are not! Who are you, then, if you are not your father’s daughter?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “I am my father’s daughter, but my father was not Judge Prescott, as I thought. I never knew it till he died last May. Mother had to tell me then on account of some business matters and it almost broke my heart, I was so fond of him and so proud of being his daughter and he was so kind to me. I held his hand when he died and kissed him and called him father and didn’t suspect the truth. I don’t think you will care for me when you know all. I have always heard the Masons were very proud.”

“And I have always heard the Tracys were very proud. Greek meeting Greek, you see,” Roy rejoined. “But go ahead. Let’s hear the story. Nothing can ever change my love for you. Who are you? Who was your father?”

“Have you ever heard of the Prospect House in Ridgefield, Mass.?” Fanny asked, and Roy answered briskly, “I guess I have. It was there father met my mother, twenty-three years ago. I had heard piles about it and the funny little landlord before I went there this last summer with father and mother. We had a fancy to drive through the country, stopping where night overtook us, and the second day we reached the Prospect House, which looks rather old fashioned beside the fine hotel which has been built on the Common. I wanted to stop there but nothing could keep father from the Prospect House, and I was glad we went there. I wish you could see the landlord, Uncle Zach they call him. He is an old man with such a fat body and short legs and round good natured face, and what do you think he called his wife?”

Fanny could not guess, and Roy continued, “Dot, and Dotty, and I’ll bet she weighs two hundred, and is nearer eighty than seventy. Think of calling her Dotty! There is love of the right sort, isn’t it? But I shall love you just as well when you weigh three hundred and are ninety, as I do now.”

His hand had gotten quite under the cushion and had one of Fanny’s.

“You hurt,” she said, as he gave it a hard squeeze. “And you must not hold it either. You don’t know at all who I am. Did they mention Mark Hilton at the Prospect House?”

“Why, yes, I think they did,” Roy said slowly, as if trying to recall something which had slipped his memory. “Father and mother and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were talking and I heard that name I am sure. When I joined them they stopped suddenly, as if they did not care to continue the conversation. Who was he, anyway? Some scamp?”

“He was my father,” Fanny said defiantly.

“Your father! Great Scott, why didn’t you say so?” Roy exclaimed.

“You needn’t swear if he was my father,” Fanny answered, beginning to cry.

The second cushion had followed the first to the floor by this time and Roy had his arm around Fanny, to whom he said, “Don’t cry. Great Scott isn’t a swear. I only said it because I must say something. What of Mark Hilton?”

“He was clerk at the Prospect House, and none the worse for that. The Vanderbilts and Astors and a lot more people did not have as good a beginning,” Fanny said, and Roy replied, “Of course not. Very few of us can boast of high-toned beginnings. My great-grandfather was a carpenter.”

“Pho!” Fanny said, with a laugh which had not much mirth in it. “I can beat that on a grandmother when I get to her. I don’t think a carpenter at all bad.”

“Neither do I,” Roy said, “and I don’t care if your father was a tinker. Tell me about him.”

“You see, it was this way,” Fanny began. “My mother was at the hotel the same summer with your father and mother. Mr. Hilton was very handsome and very tall and very nice. I know he was nice,” and she emphasized her words with sundry nods of her head as a warning that she was not to be disputed.

“Of course he was nice, or he couldn’t have been your father,” Roy said, and Fanny continued, “Mother, you know, is very handsome now. She was beautiful then,—a belle and an heiress and a great catch. She’d had I don’t know how many offers, fifty maybe, and she has a book with all their names in it. I tried to have her show it to me once and she wouldn’t. She keeps it to remind her of other days when she feels depressed. Grandma Tracy thought she ought to marry the President, or somebody like him, but she loved my father and the same as eloped with him. She came to New York in the morning on an errand. He came in the evening and they were married the next day. Grandma wouldn’t forgive them, or see my mother until after she was divorced. I think that word has a bad sound, and I am ashamed of it, but I am telling you everything just as I made mother tell me. I was ill for weeks after it, and thought everybody who looked at me was thinking about it.”

“What a foolish little girl,” Roy said, trying to pull her head down upon his shoulder. “Lots of people are divorced and nothing is thought of it. It is quite the fashion.”

“I don’t care if they are,” Fanny replied. “I think it is wicked, and told mother so. Don’t hold my head down. I am going to keep it up as long as I can. By and by I shall want to hang it so low,—oh, so low!”

“Not on account of a divorce,” Roy said, and Fanny rejoined, “That isn’t all; there is something a great deal worse. Father and mother went to Chicago and were very happy for a while,—then not so happy, and then not happy at all. Mother says she was more to blame than he. She liked attention and had it, and that made him jealous, and she used to tell him that she stooped when she married him, and taunted him with what I’m going to tell you about by and by. I was six months old and don’t remember it of course,—their quarrelling. I mean. He loved me, I know.”

“I am sure he did,” Roy interrupted her, giving her at the same time a squeeze which she did not seem to notice, she was so absorbed in her story.

“Once mother told him she wished he would go away and never come back, and he did go, and never came back. There was a boy living with them,—Jefferson Wilkes, in whom my father was interested and who had come to them from the Prospect House. Jeff, they called him, and he went with my father. After a while mother instituted proceedings for a divorce on the ground of desertion and incompatibility and psychological repulsion. Do you know what that is?”

“I know what it isn’t,” Roy said, kissing the face which began to look very pitiful as the story progressed.

“Mother knew where father was for a time and sent him a copy of the divorce. He replied, ‘I congratulate you on your freedom. You will not have any trouble in filling my place. You are young enough and handsome enough to have twenty-two more offers. Jeff and I are off for the mines in Montana. Tell the baby, when she is old enough to understand, that, bad as I was, I loved her. Mark Hilton.’

“I was ill with diphtheria when mother received the note,—so ill that the papers, when commenting on the divorce, said that I was dead. Six months later mother saw an account of a terrible accident in some mines in Montana. In the list of killed was my father’s name, but there was no mention of Jeff. Mother tried to learn the particulars, but could not, and after a while she came back to New York deserted, divorced and widowed, but still very beautiful. We lived with grandma, a proud old lady, who had never received my father. She is dead now and I do not remember her. Among mother’s friends was Judge Prescott, whom she used to know, and who, I think, wanted her before she married my father. When I was two and a half years old she married him and at his request I took his name. I was christened Frances, but he did not like that name and I was called Fanny to please him. I like it better than Frances, don’t you?”

Roy would have liked any name which belonged to her and said so, while she continued: “You were in Europe when all this happened and knew nothing about it as you are not much older than I am.”

“Two years,” Roy said, kissing her again, while she tried to disengage herself from him, but could not, for a lock of her hair had become frightfully entangled in a button of his coat.

It took some time to disentangle it and Fanny was obliged to lie quietly upon Roy’s arm, with her face upturned to him so temptingly that not to kiss it occasionally was impossible for one of his temperament.

“Roy Mason!” she exclaimed, “You must not kiss and squeeze me the way you are doing, and I not able to get away, with my hair all snarled up in your buttons. It is mean in you, and I’ll call mother if you don’t stop. I believe she is in the next room, listening, perhaps.”

“Let her listen. She was young once,” Roy said, going on very deliberately, while Fanny, from necessity, lay passive on his arm.

When the hair business was settled she moved away from him, and picking up a cushion put it between them again.

“I was telling you about Judge Prescott, whom I called my father, although now I have a faint recollection of a time when there was no gentleman in our house,” she said. “When he died mother told me everything. I don’t think she meant to tell me the whole dreadful story, but she gave some hints and I would not let her stop. I said I’d go to Ridgefield and inquire, and so she had to tell me, and if there is more to know I do not care to hear it. I feel now as if my life had been all a lie. Fanny Prescott, indeed! When I am really Fanny Hilton, and that is not the worst of it. Stop, Roy! You shall not touch me again till I’m through,” she said, as Roy’s arm came over the cushion toward her hand.

“Did you ever hear of a haunted house in Ridgefield, where a woman in a white gown and blue ribbons walks at night and a drowning man calls for ’Tina. That’s the woman’s name, and she sat still and let him drown, and a baby cries at all hours for its mother? That is ’Tina, too,—who—who—was hung!”

“By Jove, that’s a corker for a story!” Roy replied. “I never heard of it before, but I like haunted houses, with women in white and blue ribbons and cries for ’Tina, who was hung! Tell me about it, and what it has to do with you.”

In as few words as possible Fanny told the story of the Dalton tragedy as she had heard it from her mother, while Roy listened with absorbing interest.

“What do you think now of the great-great-granddaughter of ’Tina?” Fanny asked when the story was ended.

“I think her the sweetest, dearest little girl in all the world, and do not care a continental for the woman in white and blue ribbons, or the haunted house. You say there is only a cellar hole there now and that it belongs to you or your mother,” Roy answered, throwing the cushion half way across the room and putting both arms around Fanny, who was crying, but who sat very still while he went on, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do when we are married. We will build a pretty cottage there,—a real up to date one, with bay windows and wide piazzas and give ’Tina a chance to perambulate under cover rainy nights. You say she takes such times to walk in preference to pleasant weather. I should think that white dress would be rather frayed and draggled and the blue ribbons slimpsy by this time.”

He was making light of the matter and a load was lifted from Fanny’s heart, for she had dreaded telling him the story which had weighed so heavily upon her since she heard it.

“It is so kind in you, Roy, not to care about that hanging,” she said. “I have felt the rope around my neck so many times and have dreamed that I was ’Tina. I must look like her. She was blue eyed and fair-haired and small, just like me, who am not a bit like mother. Her grave is in the Ridgefield cemetery, ’Tina’s I mean, and mother sat there on the wall right by it when father told her the story. He didn’t keep anything back, and held his head just as high when he said, ‘My great-grandmother was hung.’ His grandfather was the baby who cried for its mother. I’ve heard that, too, when I have been awake in the night and been so sorry for it. Mother says my father was very tall and fine looking, and that I have some of his ways with my eyes and hands. I have dreamed of him so often since she told me, and sometimes it seems to me he is not dead. There is no proof except that notice in the paper and a letter mother had from the mines saying some of the bodies were so crushed they could not be recognized, and as my father was known to be in the mine and never seen again, it was highly probable he was dead. Oh, if I could find him! I think you’d better hunt for him than to be building a cottage to keep ’Tina from the rain!”

She spoke lightly now. Roy evidently didn’t care and the tragedy which had cast so dark a shadow on her life when she heard of it began to lessen in its proportions.

“I hear mother,” she said at last. “I thought she was in the next room, but she is a little deaf. I don’t believe she has heard all the foolish things you have said to me. Mother, here is Roy,” she continued, as the heavy portieres parted and her mother stood before her.

CHAPTER II.
MRS. PRESCOTT.

Naturally twenty-three years had changed her somewhat. The freshness and grace of youth were gone, with much of her brilliant complexion. Her dark hair was sprinkled with grey, and her eyes had lost some of the sparkle which had lured so many suitors to her side, but she was a very beautiful woman still, whom strangers looked at a second time, inquiring who she was. She had at first rebelled against wearing widow’s weeds, but when she saw how becoming they were to her she became quite reconciled to her mourning and was beginning to feel reconciled to her widowhood, which gave her the freedom she had not enjoyed since her second marriage. She had paid a full penalty for her heartless act and had repented of her folly. There had been a year of so of perfect happiness with Mark Hilton and then the restraints of married life began to weary her. It had been her boast that because her husband knew her so well he could never find fault with her, and there she was mistaken.

He was fond of her and proud of her and glad to see her admired as long as the admiration was unsought, but when with the little arts she knew so well she tried to attract attention his jealousy was aroused, and gradually there came to be stormy scenes between them,—bitter quarrels when things were said on both sides which it was hard to forget. Finding that with all his apparent unconcern he was sore on the subject of his antecedents Helen used that as a lash and often reminded him of the difference in their social positions and the depth to which she stooped when she married him. Then they quarreled more fiercely than ever and the baby was made the instrument of goading Mark to madness. That it had a drop of blood in its veins which could be traced back to a scaffold was often a source of regret with Helen coupled with a wish that she had married Craig Mason instead of throwing herself away on a hotel clerk, with no family connections. Mark was not naturally bad-tempered; neither was Helen. They were simply wholly unsuited to each other. They had married in haste, trampling upon the rights and happiness of Craig Mason without remorse, and as a natural sequence reaped the consequence of their sin.

At last, after a sharp altercation in which Helen expressed a wish that she had never seen her husband, he left her, taking Jeff with him and leaving a note saying he should not return as he was tired of the life he was living. Urged on by her mother, who had never accepted Mark as a son-in-law, a divorce was easily obtained and Helen free from the tie which had become so distasteful to her. Chancing to know that Mark was in Denver she sent him a copy of the divorce and received in return the note of which Fanny had told Roy. After that she knew no more of him until she heard of a terrible explosion in some mine in Montana. Among the killed was Mark Hilton’s name. Then in an agony of remorse she tried to verify the report. What she learned was that none of the bodies could be identified, they were so bruised and burned. Mark was known to have been in the mine and never seen after. Of Jeff nothing was known. He might, or might not, have been in the mine. In all human probability Mark was dead, and the divorce, of which she did not like to think, need not have been obtained. She was free without it and always spoke of herself to her friends as a widow, although she wore no black. If any of her old tenderness for Mark Hilton returned to her at times she gave no sign and was outwardly unchanged, except that she was very quiet and shunned society rather than courted it.

At her mother’s request she returned to her home in New York and there at last met again the Walter Prescott whose name had been in her blue book as her possible husband before she met Craig Mason. In some respects he was like Craig, undemonstrative, caring little for society and much for books. He had never forgotten Helen and soon fell again under her spell. He knew of her divorce and would rather it had not been, but her beauty conquered him and she became his wife and mistress of one of the finest establishments in New York. With Judge Prescott, whom she respected and feared, she lived very comfortably. He was not a man to tolerate any nonsense. His wife, like Caesar’s, must be above reproach, and from the first he was master of the situation.

Helen was very fond of Fanny, who was as unlike her as it was possible for a child to be unlike its mother. “She has not a feature like me, nor like her father, either, unless it is something in the expression of her eyes and the gesture of her hands,” she often thought, as she studied Fanny’s face and wondered where she got her blue eyes and fair hair and the delicacy of her complexion and form. “I believe she gets it a hundred years back from ’Tina,” she sometimes said, and then for a while rebelled against the heritage she had given her lovely daughter. “She shall never know of it,” she thought, and kept it to herself until Judge Prescott’s death, when it seemed necessary to tell Fanny of her real father.

Seizing upon something inadvertently spoken, Fanny, who was persistent and determined, never rested until she knew the whole story as her mother knew it. Over the father killed in the mines she wept bitterly, while the tragedy filled her with horror and for a time she refused to see anyone lest they should read in her face the secret which was making her life miserable. She had been so proud of being a Prescott and proud of her supposed father that it was hard to find herself suddenly stranded with no father, no name of which to boast, and she had dreamed many a night of the scaffold and of ’Tina, whom she was sure she resembled. “What will Roy say when he knows,” had been in her thoughts all the long summer while she was with her mother in the quiet mountain resort. That Roy loved her she knew and that he would sometime tell her so she was sure. “And when he does I must tell him everything and he will not care for me any more,” she thought. He had declared his love. She had told him everything, and he did not care; he could even jest about ’Tina and talk of a cottage to shield her from the weather. The revulsion of feeling was great, and Fanny’s face was radiant with happiness, when Mrs. Prescott appeared suddenly in the door.

With a mother’s intuition Mrs. Prescott had foreseen the probable result of Roy’s intimacy with her daughter, and nothing could please her more than to see Fanny his wife and connected with the Mason family. Consequently when she entered the room and saw Fanny’s confusion and Roy’s exultation she guessed the truth and was prepared to hear all Roy had to say, as in a straight-forward, manly way he told her what his wishes were and asked her consent.

“Has she told you everything?” Mrs. Prescott said. “Your parents know it all, of course. They were a part of the drama played that summer which seems to me ages ago. Nor can I realize that I am the person who was guilty of that heartless escapade.”

She was thinking of Craig Mason, while Fanny, who knew nothing of that page in her mother’s life, thought only of her father, and said, “Oh, mother, you are not sorry you married my father? You can’t be, if you love me. Where would I have been if you hadn’t married him? He was nice, I know he was.”

The brave little girl, who was fighting down all her pride of family and birth, would be loyal to the father she had never known and it touched her mother closely.

“I was thinking of the way I married him,” she said, sitting down by Fanny and smoothing her hair, which was still a good deal disordered from contact with Roy’s buttons and coatsleeves. “One always regrets the foolishness of youth which might have been avoided.”

Turning now to Roy she continued, “When I married Judge Prescott it was his wish that Fanny should take his name, and mine to forget the past so far as possible. Your parents were abroad, but I wrote asking them to be reticent on the matter.”

“And they have been,” Roy answered quickly. “I never heard of Mr. Hilton until to-day; nor of his grandmother; nor do I care how many he had, nor how they died. I dare say half of mine ought to have been hung, if the truth were known. That has nothing to do with my love for Fanny. I want her, and right off, too,—the sooner the better. Father and mother knew my business here. I talked it all over with them and they would rather have Fanny for a daughter than anyone they know. When can I take her?”

He was very impetuous, and Mrs. Prescott could not repress a sigh as she looked at his flushed, eager face and remembered her own youth so far in the past.

“You can have my daughter,” she said, “but not yet. She is not quite twenty and you are only twenty-two, both children in experience. You must wait a year at least; that will soon pass. I cannot spend another winter in this climate. I have tried Florida and do not like it, and have decided upon California, and Fanny will go with me. In June or July we shall visit the Yosemite, and when we return home it will be time to think of bridal festivities.”

She was very firm, as she usually was when her mind was made up. All summer she had been planning this trip to California, intending, either on her way there, or on her return, to visit the mines in Montana where Mark had met his death. She would not like to admit to anyone the great desire she had to see some of the people who had known him and, if possible, to learn what had become of Jeff. For a brief space of time she had loved Mark passionately, and she always thought of him now with regret for the bitter things she had said to him. He had once told her there was in him, about equally balanced, the making of an angel or a devil, and a woman’s hand would turn the scale. She had turned it and sent him to destruction, and the widow’s weeds she wore were almost as much for Mark Hilton as for the courtly Judge Prescott. Sometimes in her sleep she heard Mark’s voice calling to her from beyond the Rockies and bidding her come to him with their child. Again she sat with him in the ghost-haunted room in Ridgefield and promised to prove false to the vows made to Craig only the night before. On such occasions she would wake suddenly, bathed with perspiration and thank God it was all a dream. She did not wish Mark back. Their paths diverged more widely now than when they separated. It was her treatment of him which she regretted, and her many sleepless nights and restless days had undermined her health, until a change was necessary. She must go to California and Roy must wait for his bride until another year.

“Why can’t I go with you? You need some man to take care of you, especially in the Yosemite, where the brigands are so thick that the stages are stopped every few days,” Roy said.

But Mrs. Prescott was not afraid of the brigands, and didn’t need a man as an escort, and Roy was compelled to acquiesce in waiting a year, which seemed to him as endless. Mrs. Prescott promised to bring Fanny to Boston before leaving for California, and with this to comfort him he left New York the following day, anxious to carry the glad news of his engagement to his father and mother. He made very short work of it.

“I have asked Fanny to be my wife, and she has consented,” he said. “She is not Fanny Prescott at all, but Fanny Hilton. I know all about it, ’Tina and all, and don’t care.”

Craig and Alice did not care, either. To them it was an old story nearly forgotten, and they congratulated their son and at once forwarded a letter to Helen inviting her and Fanny to spend Thanksgiving with them.

CHAPTER III.
ANCESTRY.

It was a large dinner party assembled on Thanksgiving day to do honor to the little bride-elect, who bore herself with great dignity when the engagement was announced and congratulations heaped upon her and Roy. She would have liked to have been known by her real name, Hilton, but her mother objected, and as neither Roy nor his parents saw the necessity for the explanation it would involve she yielded to their judgment and was Fanny Prescott, as she had always been. Her mother could only stay for a few days in Boston, and on the morning of her departure Fanny said to Roy, who was to accompany them, “Let’s stop at Ridgefield over a train. I want to see where father used to live. Mother can go on without us. Will you?”

Roy was willing, and when the village ’bus in Ridgefield went up the hill from the 10 o’clock train it carried two young people who were looking about them as curiously as people were looking at them. Ridgefield had not grown much within twenty-three years, but there had been some changes. An electric car now connected it with Worcester and the intermediate towns and this gave it a thriftier appearance. A few houses had been added in the side streets and a new and large hotel built on the Common. In front of this the driver stopped, while a smart clerk came hurrying out.

“Not here. Take us to the Prospect House,” Roy said.

The clerk looked surprised as he turned on his heel, while the driver whipped up his horses, wondering why such swells, as his passengers undoubtedly were, should prefer the Prospect House to the Tremont. But it was none of his business, and he was soon at the Prospect House, which looked rather shabby and uninviting, with an air of neglect everywhere visible. The Tremont had killed it, and in his old age Uncle Zacheus had little heart to compete with his rival. A few boarders still clung to him, but transients were very rare, and when Roy and Fanny alighted from the ’bus and came up the walk he was greatly excited and called loudly to Dot to hurry up as somebody was coming. His welcome was cheery, as of old, as he advanced to meet the young couple.

“Glad to see you; yes, I be. Want a room? For one, or two? just married, ain’t you?” he said, not remembering Roy at all in his flurry.

“No, oh no!” Fanny exclaimed, blushing crimson. “We are not married, and have only stopped over a train to see where father used to live. I am Mark Hilton’s daughter, and I want you to show me his room and his office and everything, and then we are going to the cellar hole and the grave, and everywhere.”

Uncle Zacheus was at first too astonished to speak and stared open-mouthed at the girl whose blue eyes fascinated and confused him, they were so bright and large and clear, and seemed to take in everything at once within their vision. His wife, who had stopped to slip on a clean white apron and smooth her hair before going to receive her guests, now appeared on the scene, and, at sight of her, Uncle Zach recovered his speech so far as to give vent to his usual ejaculation. “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! Yes, I will!” he said, advancing toward Fanny and offering his hand.

For an instant she drew back. She had not expected what she found. Everything was so different from her life that it was hard to associate her father with this place and this queer little man making so free with her. A look from Roy reassured her and she gave her hand to Mr. Taylor, who nearly crushed it before he let go his hold. Roy was explaining now and talking to Mrs. Taylor, who remembered him having been there with his father and mother, and finally succeeded in conveying that fact to her husband’s rather hazy mind.

“Don’t I remember them young folks who was here a few years ago? Wall, I guess I do, and this is their boy and girl? I don’t understand it,” he said; then, as it began to dawn upon him more clearly, he continued, addressing himself to Fanny, “I know now; you are Mark’s girl, but you don’t look like him, unless it’s some trick with your eyes,—nor like your mother, neither. Who are you like, I wonder?”

He was scanning her very closely, and without at all considering what she was saying, Fanny answered him: “Perhaps I am like father’s great-grandmother, ’Tina. Did you ever see her?”

“Bless my soul, child; how old do you take me to be?” and Uncle Zach burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m only eighty-three, and Miss Dalton,—that’s ’Tina,—has been dead a hundred and twenty years; but I believe you are like her. They say she was han’som’ as a picter, with blue eyes and yaller hair and clingin’ ways.”

Fanny was not particularly pleased to have her resemblance to ’Tina discussed, and Roy, who wished to change the conversation, said abruptly, “Can we go into the office where Mr. Hilton used to spend his time?”

“Certainly, and all over the house, too,” Mr. Taylor replied, leading the way to the office, where Fanny examined everything and sat in every chair and looked over the register of years ago which was brought out for her to see.

Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick. Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead. No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes, marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but ’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the office; here ’tis.”

He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw it on that November day, was not at all to her taste.

“Now, let’s go to the ruin and the grave,” she said to Roy, who shrugged his shoulders, thinking he was bound on a rather gruesome business.

“I shall have to ask the way to both places, as I believe they lie in different directions,” he said, and turning to Mr. Taylor he began to make inquiries as to the best way of reaching the Dalton ruin and the cemetery and where to find ’Tina’s grave.

“Want to see that suller?” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed. “Why, all the timbers has fell in and there’s nothin’ left but a hole. I wonder it hain’t been sold afore now, though nobody wants it, there’s so much stuff told to this day about the ghost. They say she carries a candle now. In my opinion she’s enough to do repentin’, without spookin’ round where she used to live. I beg your pardon, Miss Hilton. I forgot I was speakin’ of your grandmarm, who lived more than a hundred years before you,” he said to Fanny, who was pale to her lips.

She knew he meant no harm and tried to smile, but it was a pitiful kind of smile, which made Roy’s heart ache for her.

“Poor little Fan,” he said, when they were out in the street. “This is a hard day for you. Hadn’t you better give up the ruin?”

“No;” she said resolutely. “I want to see what my father called his ancestral hall. It was there he asked mother to marry him. I made her tell me all about it. They sat on an old settee, and there were rats in the room. Oh, this must be where we turn, and there is the curb to the well they threw him in,” she added, as they reached the lane which led to the ruin.

When walking through the village Fanny had kept apart from Roy, but now she clung closely to him as they went down the road till they came to what was once the front entrance to the house. Window frames, door posts, heavy joists and portions of the roof lay piled together, with the dried remnants of the last summer’s weeds showing among the debris. The day was not cold for November, but the sky was leaden and there was a feeling of rain in the air. The trees were bare and the dead leaves lay in the path, or were piled against the fence and wall. There was no place to sit down and Fanny would not have sat if there had been. She was in a kind of dream, going over in imagination the events of more than a century ago. At last Roy brought her back to reality by kicking at a part of what might have been a pier to the wall and which, giving way, went crashing down into the cellar.

“What a pile of rubbish and what a place for ’Tina to promenade! I don’t wonder she brings a candle. She would certainly break her neck in the dark if it had not already been broken,” he said, without a thought as to how the last of his remark sounded.

But Fanny thought, and with a plaintive cry said to him, “Oh, Roy, how can you joke about my grandmother? You’d feel differently if she were yours.”

“She is mine,” Roy replied, “or is going to be, and what I said about her neck was rather mean. Honestly, though, Fan, you are too morbid over an affair which everybody has forgotten and for which you are in no way responsible. Let’s get away from here.”

“Wait till I’ve looked in the well,” Fanny replied.

She went to the well and leaning over the curb looked down, shuddering at the thought of a human body struggling there and calling for help.

“I am ready now for the grave,” she said, when her investigation of the well was finished.

“Must we go there?” Roy asked, rather dubiously.

“Yes, we must. I owe it to father. They are his people and mine,” Fanny answered, and the two retraced their steps through the village to the Prospect House, where Uncle Zach stood on the piazza and said to them, “Dotty’s getting dinner ready for you when you come back from the cemetry. Turn to your right and foller close to the wall clear down to the corner. They’re sunk in some, I guess.”

They found the graves without any difficulty, but, as Mr. Taylor had said, they were sunken and neglected. No one had cared for them since Mark went away. The grass around them was never cut and now lay in dry clumps upon them. The rose bush Mark had planted was dead and a huge burdock stood in its place. The headstones were weather-beaten and discolored, and that of ’Tina had partially fallen over. Fanny went down upon the ground and read the name “Christine Dalton.” There was nothing to tell where she was born or where she died, and in her nervous, morbid state Fanny found herself pitying the woman who had gone to her grave dishonored and despised.

“Nobody ever shed a tear for you, I dare say, but I will,” she said, and sitting upon the stone where her mother had sat with Mark Hilton when he told her the story of ’Tina, she began to cry very low to herself, so that Roy might not hear and laugh at her. “Where is he?” she said, when she had paid sufficient respect to ’Tina, and looking up, missed him from her side.

She saw him at last in the distance standing near the monument of Gen. Allen, and his loud call came to her across the rows of graves which intervened.

“I say, Fan, ar’n’t you some connection to Gen. George Allen, who served in the Revolutionary War, was wounded at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, and did a lot more things, and died regretted by friend and foe?”

She did not answer, and he continued, “Come away from that damp, lonesome place. I got chilly there myself. Come up here and visit another ancestor, who, perhaps, wasn’t any more respectable than those you are mooning over, but he has a stunner for a monument and an obituary as long as my arm.”

Fanny was getting tired and cold, and went up the slope to where Roy was waiting for her.

“Yes, that is mother’s grandfather,” she said, rather cheerfully, as she looked at the monument and read the inscription upon it.

There was some difference between this costly stone and well-kept enclosure where a number of Allens were lying and the sunken, neglected graves under the shadow of the wall, and Fanny felt the difference, and her spirits began to rise in the vicinity of the Allens, who represented the aristocracy of the cemetery. Both belonged to her, the grand monument and the sunken graves, the Allens and the Daltons,—but the Allens were the nearest of kin,—they were like what she was born to and had been accustomed to all her life and she felt a thrill of pride on reading the eulogy on her great-grandfather, who had rendered such service to his country and been so highly esteemed by his fellow-citizens.

“Good blood there, of the bluest kind,” Roy said, teasingly. “It ought to make amends for forty ’Tinas.” Then, as the shrill whistle from the shoe shop came echoing across the fields, he continued: “Twelve o’clock; time we were going, if you have seen enough of your ancestors. I’m getting hungry.”

He was very practical and led Fanny so adroitly from what he called “an ancestral fit” that she was quite herself by the time they reached the Prospect House. Mrs. Taylor had prepared a most appetizing dinner for them, which she served upon a small round table placed near a window and the stove, where they could have both warmth and light. All her best things were on duty and Fanny, who found the dinner excellent, began to change her mind with regard to the hotel. In the summer it must be very pleasant, especially on the broad piazzas, and perhaps she should come again, she said to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, as she bade them good bye.

“Bless you, child, I hope you will,” Uncle Zacheus replied, holding her hand and trying to keep back his tears which his wife told him he needn’t shed so often unless he had softening of the brain, of which they were signs. “It is good for my old eyes to see young people. There don’t many come since they built the big stone tavern on the Common. I began to run down when Mark went away. A good feller, that, and I cry when I think of him dead. I can’t help it if ’tis sign of soff’nin’. I remember the old days when Mark and your mother and this young man’s father and mother was here and the house was full of young voices and courtin’ and love-makin’ from mornin’ till night. Your young man,—I know he is yourn by the way he looks at you,—has a good face like his father and mother. You’ll be happy with him, and he’ll be happy with you. Your face ain’t like nobody’s, but makes me think of some flower that is ever so sweet and lovely and modest,—I can’t remember the name. ’Tain’t a rose, nor a pink, nor a piney.”

Roy laughed, and suggested, “Lily of the Valley.”

“I swan, that’s it. Lily of the Valley,” Uncle Zach returned, and continued, “I s’pose I must say good bye and God bless you and make you happy. Good bye.”

He turned to leave them, when Fanny took his hand again,—the one her mother had kissed years ago—and pressed her lips upon it just as Helen had done.

“I’ll surely come again,” she said, and then hurried away, for it was getting near train time and they were going to walk.

That kiss was too much for Uncle Zach. Softening of the brain or no softening of the brain he must cry, and he did, while his wife derided him for his weakness.

“I shall cry if I want to,” he said, evincing considerable spirit for him. “I never told you of it, but her mother kissed my hand three and twenty years ago when she went away and I’ve never seen her since, and never shall, nor this little girl, neither. She will come, maybe, but I shan’t be here. I’m wearin’ out. There’s more ails me than sofnin’ of the brain. I’m old,—most eighty-four. I’m slippin’ away from you, Dotty, and from the places I love so well.”

Here his feelings so overcame him that he cried like a child, while his wife, touched by the sight of his tears, tried to comfort him.

“No you ain’t slippin’ away,” she said. “You’ll see ’em again. You are good for ten years more, and so am I, and I am seventy-eight. Wipe up, there’s somebody comin’.”

He wiped up, and under the combined effects of a traveller who wanted dinner and Dotty’s assurance of ten years longer lease of life he was quite cheerful until he heard the rumble of the train which was to take Roy and Fanny away. Then a sense of loneliness came over him again and he kept whispering to himself, “Good bye, good bye, Mark’s gal and Craig’s boy. I shall never see you again. Good bye.”

CHAPTER IV.
INEZ.

Mrs. Prescott had spent the winter in Southern California, and some time in April was registered at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, with her daughter and maid. As her meals were served in her private parlor and she seldom stopped in the public reception room, she saw none of the guests of the house, except a few New Yorkers who were stopping there. Fanny, on the contrary, saw everybody, and flitted through the hotel like a sunbeam, with a pleasant word for those she knew and a smile for those she did not know. Her mother sometimes tried to restrain her from being so free with people, telling her that since she had heard of the circumstances of her birth she had developed a most plebeian taste.

“If I have it tastes good,” Fanny would answer, laughingly, “and I am a great deal happier in liking people and having them like me than I was when I felt that the world was made for me and only a select few had a right to share it with me.”

She was very happy and enjoyed everything thoroughly. Time was passing and only a few months remained before her return to Roy, who wrote her nearly every day. In his last letter he told her he had been to Ridgefield.

“I was in Worcester,” he wrote, “and I took the electric, for I wanted to see Uncle Zach again. He is a case, isn’t he? He had the rheumatism and can scarcely walk. Poor old man! He cried when he spoke of the days when our parents were there making love to each other. He was quite poetic in his lamentations. ‘No more matin’ of birds, here,’ he said. ‘They’ve all flew off to the Tremont House, leavin’ me nothin’ but some dum English sparrers.’ He talked a great deal of your father and a boy Jeff. Said he didn’t believe he was dead, and he should be perfectly happy if he were with him again, turnin’ summersaults! That would be funny, as Jeff, if living, must be over thirty. Of course I visited your property, which, if possible, looks more dilapidated than when we were there last November. It has quite a fascination for me, and I really mean, with your permission, and your mother’s, to build a cottage there, where we can spend a few weeks every summer.

“When do you go to the Yosemite? Do you know I have a queer feeling about that trip and am half inclined to take it with you. I have just seen a chap who two years ago last summer was waylaid by robbers. He says it’s not an uncommon thing for the stage to be stopped. His experience was a bad one. Two ladies fainted from sheer fright and one of them was robbed while unconscious. A strange feature of this robbery was that the watch taken from the fainting woman and which had her name engraved upon it was sent to her by mail to the hotel where she was stopping. Most of the money taken was also returned to the owners who could least afford to lose it. A queer thing for marauders to do, and shows that they are habitues of the neighborhood and have facilities for learning the names and position of those whom they plunder. I hope you will not meet with an adventure of this kind.”

On the morning when Fanny received this letter she was sitting by the window of one of the parlors in the hotel, reading it a second time, and feeling a little nervous with regard to the stage robberies of which she had heard something in San Francisco. A Firemen’s Parade was passing, with all the paraphernalia of bands and hose carts and boys and a crowd generally, but she paid no attention to it until a clear, musical voice, with a slight accent, said to her, “Pretty, isn’t it, Miss Prescott; and isn’t father grand in his new suit? That’s he,—the tall man who bowed to me when I kissed my hand to him. He is foreman of one of the companies.”

Surprised at being so familiarly addressed by a stranger, Fanny looked up and saw standing by the next window a young girl whom she had seen several times in the halls and corridors and wondered who she was. She was tall and well proportioned. Her features were regular, her eyes dark and lustrous and veiled under very long lashes and surmounted by heavy brows which made them seem darker than they were. Her complexion was a rich olive, telling of a southern sun which must have warmed the blood of one or both of her parents. There was nothing impertinent in her manner. It was simply friendly, and Fanny, who was longing for some young person to speak to, answered pleasantly, “How did you know my name?”

“Oh, everybody knows that,” the girl replied, “and if they didn’t they have only to look on the register. I saw you the day you came and have watched you ever since when I had a chance and I wanted to speak to you so badly. I don’t know why, only I did. It seemed to me I should like you, and I know so few young girls. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken to you, but you don’t mind, do you?”

She was so frank and unsophisticated and her face was so pretty and pleasant that Fanny had no thought of being offended. She had been told by her mother never to talk with strangers and especially to the class to which this girl belonged. But Fanny usually talked to whom she pleased and as she attracted this strange girl so the girl attracted and fascinated her.

“Sit down, please, and tell me your name, inasmuch as you know mine,” she said.

The girl sat down and folded her hands just as Fanny had a trick of folding hers. There was this difference, however,—the girl’s hands were large and brown,—helpful hands, used to toil,—while Fanny’s were soft and white and dimpled like a baby’s. The girl was not at all averse to talking of herself and said, “I am Inez Rayborne. My father is an American. My mother was half Mexican, half Spanish,—with a little Gypsy blood in her. She used to call me Gypsy because I love the mountains and rocks and woods so much. Father married her near Santa Barbara, and her name was Anita. Isn’t that a pretty name?”

Fanny said it was, and Inez went on: “She was a little bit of a body whom father could take up and set on his shoulder. He is big and tall, and I am big, too. I wish I was small like mother and you. Mother is dead, and I have been so lonely since she died.”

Her eyes filled with tears which hung on her lashes as she continued: “Our home is in the Yosemite, not far from Inspiration Point, and perched on the hillside above the stage road, with a lovely view of the valley and the mountains. We call it Prospect Cottage and in winter we shut it up and come to the city. Before mother died we went sometimes to Santa Barbara, sometimes to Los Angeles. Now we come here and I help the housekeeper in part payment for my board. Father helps round the hotel, and Tom, too, when he is here.”

“Who is Tom?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Oh, he is Tom and has lived with us since I can remember, and is like a son to father. In the summer, when the hotels in the valley are full of visitors, they sometimes go on trails as guides with the people. Again they are off on some business, seeing to exchange of property, which keeps them away for days. Then I am so lonesome and afraid, too, if there is a robbery on the road. I have a splendid dog, Nero, to take care of me. He is young, but very large. He is here with us. Maybe you have noticed him lying in the office or the hall.”

Fanny had seen a big dog around the hotel and had patted his head, for she was fond of dogs, but she was more interested now in what Inez said of a robbery.

“Do you mean stage robberies, and are they of frequent occurrence?” she asked.

“Sometimes, and sometimes not,” was Inez’s answer. “There was a dreadful one just before mother died, and I think the fright killed her. She had heart trouble and was here to-day, gone to-morrow. We were alone, and when the stage passed in the afternoon a neighbor who was on it came and told us how dreadful it was, with two ladies fainting and children crying and the highwaymen taking the watch of the woman who lay like one dead. He sent it back to her at the hotel, and the money to the others. Wasn’t that queer?”

Fanny was thinking of what Roy had written her and exclaimed, “I have heard of that.”

“You have!” Inez rejoined. “Well, the papers were full of it, and people were determined to catch the men, if possible. Mother was very nervous over it, but I never thought of her dying. We always said our prayers together, and that night she prayed that the men might be caught and the wicked work stopped. She seemed the same when she kissed me good night, but when I went into her room in the morning she could not speak. Father had come home late and was caring for her, rubbing her hands and arms, which had in them no power to move. ‘Was it the fright of the robbery?’ I said to father, who nodded, while she tried to speak and her eyes followed him in such a beseeching way. ‘Do you want to tell us something?’ I said. She nodded and made a motion to write. I brought her pencil and paper, but her nerveless hands could not hold the pencil and she died looking up at father so pitifully. He was so tender and kind to her, and cried over her like a baby, and himself put her in the coffin. It was such a little coffin I didn’t realize till I saw it how small she was. We buried her on the hill back of our house where the light from our windows can shine upon her grave when we are there in the summer. In the winter it must be awful with the snow piled so high and all of us gone. Father was almost crazy for a while and walked the floor and sat by her grave and wouldn’t eat. He staid home the rest of the season and Tom staid, too, most of the time. There were no more stages robbed that summer, and not many last summer; three or four at the most, and it so happens that I am always alone with Nero. Of course no harm can come to me but I feel nervous just the same.”

Inez was talking very earnestly and rapidly, and her language was so good that Fanny felt sure she must have had better advantages than were to be had among the mountains and asked her at last where she was educated.

“I am not educated as you are,” Inez replied. “I was at school in Stockton two years and have been to school winters in Santa Barbara and here. The rest I learned from father and mother. She had been in a convent and taught me Spanish;—that was her language. She spoke English brokenly, but so prettily. Tom brings me books to read and I know all about the east where father is to take me some day when we are able to stop at first-class hotels as guests. I am afraid, though, it will be a long time before we go. Father’s business is not always very good.”

“What did you say it was?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Exchange of property. I don’t know what that means, exactly, and when I asked Tom he said I hadn’t brain enough to understand it, if he explained. He likes to tease me.”

There was beginning to dawn upon Fanny a suspicion of the relation in which Tom stood to Inez, but she made no comment, and Inez continued: “I wish you knew father, he is so handsome for a man nearly fifty, and so kind to everybody. They worship him in the Yosemite and depend upon him a great deal. When a stage has been robbed he always gives his services to find the robbers. They have caught one or two who are in prison now, but they can get no clew to the men who have been such a terror to the neighborhood.”

“Oh,” Fanny gasped, “you frighten me so. Mother and I are going to the Yosemite in June and I should die if the stage I was in was stopped.”

“I shouldn’t,” Inez replied. “I have been on the road with father a good many times and nothing happened, but if there did I shouldn’t be afraid. I’d fly at the robber and try to kill him. Father laughs when I talk that way and says there is murder in my Gypsy blood. Perhaps there is. Any way I would not hesitate to kill a man who was robbing a coach. I’d shoot him like a dog.”

Her mood had changed as she talked. The softness had left her eyes which blazed and flashed defiantly, and she took a turn or two across the room as if she were in fancy battling with some desperado.

“Don’t look so fierce. You scare me,” Fanny said, when Inez came back and resumed her chair.

“Do I? I cannot tell you how I feel when I think of the bandits who make our beautiful valley a dread to tourists who visit it. But they may not be there at all this summer. Don’t worry about them. Leave your valuables here, especially your diamonds, if you have any. Then, if you are held up you have not so much to lose. If I knew when you were coming I believe I’d meet you in Milton, where you take the stage, or have father do it. He isn’t afraid. He goes home to-morrow or next day. Tom has already gone. I go in two or three weeks. You must come to our cottage. It is lovely.”

Inez’s face was a very changeable one, now grave and serious and sad, then sunny and sweet, with a smile which changed its whole expression. Like most communicative people she was very inquisitive, and having told all there was to tell about herself she asked Fanny about herself, her home in New York, and how old she was. “I am seventeen,” she said.

“And I am twenty. I thought you older,” Fanny replied, in some surprise.

“So does every one, because I am so tall and big, like my father. Where is your father?” Inez asked.

“He is dead,” Fanny replied, thinking of both Mark Hilton and Judge Prescott.

“Oh, I am so sorry for you; but you have a mother, and mine is lying among the hills,” Inez said, beginning to talk again of her home and her hope that Fanny would visit her when she came to the valley. “You must,” she continued. “I want you to see our cottage and mother’s grave, and father and Nero and everything. If you will let me see your mother I will ask her for you. People nearly always do what I wish them to.”

Fanny could not promise for her mother. To her Inez was a frank, simple-hearted girl, a little too forward, perhaps, but this came of her surrounding circumstances and not from any innate ill-breeding. Mrs. Prescott would probably think differently.

“Mother is something of an invalid and does not usually see strangers, but I will tell her of you,” Fanny said, and as a maid just then came to say lunch was ready she bade her good morning and left the parlor.

The acquaintance thus begun ripened into intimacy as the days went by, and the two girls saw each other often. Mistress and maid, a casual observer might have thought them, they were so unlike; the one, slight and fair as a lily and clad in garments of the latest style, with every mark of culture and refinement; the other, tall and strongly built, with a freedom of manner which betokened a child of the mountains rather than of the city, and a face singular in its beauty, and eyes wonderful in their varying expression, from a softness under their veiled lids, amounting almost to sleepiness, to gleams of passion which told of a strong nature which, when aroused, was equal to acts of daring from which Fanny in her timidity would have shrunk appalled. Inez took Fanny on frequent walks through the city which she knew so well and where so many seemed to know her. At first Mrs. Prescott objected to her daughter’s intimacy with one who, in her estimation, was little more than a peasant girl. But Fanny was not to be shaken from her allegiance, and after some inquiries of the housekeeper with regard to Inez Mrs. Prescott ceased to object to Fanny’s being so much with her.

“But don’t bring her in here. Why should I see her?” she said, when Fanny asked that Inez might be presented.

“Because I want you know her, and see if you can tell what makes me feel so when I am with her.”

“Bring her, then,” Mrs. Prescott said, one day, “but don’t let her stay long. My head aches and I am tired.”

That afternoon Fanny went out with her maid on an errand, saying to Inez as she left the hotel, “When I come back I am going to take you to mother.”

For a while Inez waited patiently, watching for Fanny’s return. To call upon Mrs. Prescott was a great event in her life and something of which to tell her father and Tom when she got home. In the housekeeper’s room and from the servants and some of the guests whom she knew, she had heard a great deal of Mrs. Prescott, who was said to be fabulously wealthy, and had such costly diamonds and wore such pretty negligées in the morning and such beautiful dresses to dinner, although there was no one but her daughter at table with her. Occasionally she had caught a glimpse of the lady on the rare occasions when she went to drive, but she was always so closely veiled that it was impossible to tell how she looked. Now, however, Inez was to see her, and she grew very impatient at Fanny’s protracted absence.

“Maybe she has come and I didn’t know it. I mean to go up and see,” she thought, as the clock struck four and there was no sign of Fanny.

Going up to Mrs. Prescott’s rooms she stole softly to the door, which was partly open. Fanny was not there, but she heard a sound as of some one in pain. Mrs. Prescott had complained of a headache all day and after Fanny and her maid went out it grew so much worse that she dropped the shades and lay down upon the couch, hoping to sleep. But the pain which was of a neuralgic nature increased so fast that she at last uttered the moan which Inez heard. Her first impulse was to go in at once; then, knowing this was not the thing to do, she knocked twice and receiving no answer ventured in. Mrs. Prescott, who was lying with her eyes closed, did not know she was there until she said, “Are you sick, and can I do anything for you?”

The voice was singularly sweet, with a tone in it which brought to Mrs. Prescott’s mind vague memories of woods and hills and sunshine on a river and pond where the white lilies grew and where in her giddiness and pain she seemed for a moment to be sailing away into the shadow of the willows which drooped over the water. Just where the woods and hills and river were was not clear to her, and the picture passed as soon as it came. Looking up she saw a young girl standing by her couch, plainly attired in a gingham dress and white apron, with a fancy silk handkerchief knotted around her neck.

“One of the chambermaids,” she thought and answered “There’s nothing you can do unless you rub my head. It aches very hard. Are you on this floor?”

Inez looked a little puzzled and replied, “On this floor? No; I room with the housekeeper. I am Inez,—Miss Prescott’s friend.”

“Oh!” and Mrs. Prescott’s eyes opened wide and a slight frown contracted her brow at what she thought an undue familiarity.

But something in Inez’s face disarmed her and brought back the picture of the woods and hills and river, with herself younger and happier than she was now. Before she could reply, Inez continued: “I used to rub mother’s head when it ached and she said it helped her. Father says I have a great deal of magnetism in my hands. I take it from him. Let me try.”

She knelt on the floor as she talked and began to manipulate Mrs. Prescott’s temples, which thrilled at once to the touch of her fingers.

“You are doing me good,” Mrs. Prescott said, lying very still while Inez smoothed her hair and rubbed her forehead and talked in her low, musical voice of her dead mother and what she used to do for her.

Mrs. Prescott listened until she had a pretty accurate knowledge of Anita and her grave among the hills and the cottage among the rocks and Inez’s handsome father. Then, as the pain in her head grew less, there came over her a feeling of restfulness and quiet. Inez’s voice was like the murmur of a brook she had heard somewhere. The leafy woods and hills and river were all blended together. Inez’s face, like something she had seen before, looked at her through the mist which was stealing over her senses and when Fanny came in she found her mother sleeping quietly, with Inez sitting by her and fanning her. After that Mrs. Prescott made no objection to her daughter’s intimacy with Inez.

“Yes, she is very nice, with something charming in her voice and manner. It is her Spanish blood, I think,” she said to Fanny, “but, of course, she is wholly untrained and knows nothing of the world. You could not have her for an associate in New York, but here it does not matter. Mrs. Ward, the housekeeper, tells me she is perfectly correct in her morals, and her father is highly respectable,—rather superior to his class which accounts for some things in Inez. I do not know that I shall object to your spending a day or so with her when we are in the Yosemite. I shall try and secure the services of her father as guide, if I go on any of the trails. They say he is exceptionally good.”

This was said a few days after Inez had left for her mountain home and Fanny was expressing a wish to visit her. The trip was planned for the middle of June, and Fanny, who had become greatly attached to Inez, was looking forward to meeting her again with nearly as much pleasure as to the Yosemite itself.

CHAPTER V.
IN THE YOSEMITE.

The Yosemite stage which left the Milton station on the afternoon of June 15, 18—, was full of passengers, all eagerly discussing an attempt made the day before to rob the coach between China Camp and Priest’s. A tall, powerfully built fellow had sprung out from behind a clump of trees as the stage was slowly ascending a long hill, and ordered the frightened inmates to hold up their hands. This they did at once, with no thought of resistance, and he was about to relieve them of whatever valuables they had on their persons, when a young man who was sitting on the box with the driver, sprang to the ground and confronting the ruffian with a revolver compelled him to retreat and sent after him a shot or two, which, however, went wide of the mark. Mr. Hardy, the hero of the exploit, was well known in Stockton and the country generally and was among the passengers that afternoon. Naturally he was plied with questions with regard to the incident and asked how he dared attack the desperado.

“I don’t know myself how I dared,” he replied. “It was so sudden that at first I whispered to the driver, ‘Go on; lick the horses, go on!’ He was shaking like a leaf,—teeth actually chattered. Then it came to me what muffs we were to sit there quietly and be robbed, and without another thought I sprang at the man, almost landing on his head. Of the rest I remember nothing until my hands were being shaken and women were crying and thanking me as their deliverer. I only wish my shot had brought him down. It was Long John, no doubt, and his companion is pretty sure to turn up soon. I’d like to meet him.”

He did not seem at all averse to talking, and the passengers listened breathlessly, conscious of a feeling of security as long as he was with them. Among those who seemed the most interested and anxious was Fanny Prescott, who sat on the same seat with the hero, and had grown very pale as his story progressed.

“Oh, mother,” she said at last, “what if that dreadful man should attack us! What should we do? I wish we had left our diamonds in San Francisco. I don’t believe, though, he could find them. They are—”

A touch on the elbow from her mother kept her from finishing a remark which elicited a smile from her companions. For a moment Mr. Hardy looked at her and then said, “If your diamonds are very valuable it would have been wise to have left them in safe keeping, but I do not anticipate any danger on this trip. The attempt of yesterday is too recent to be repeated so soon. The whole neighborhood is looking for the robbers, who are probably hiding in the woods.”

For the rest of the afternoon the conversation was of the men who were the terror of the road between Milton and the valley. The older of the two was said to be tall, the other short, and as they had been heard to address each other as John and Dick, they were usually spoken of as Long John and Little Dick, and so daring and sudden were their movements and so seldom did they fail to execute their purpose that the mention of their names was sufficient to fill the stoutest heart with fear. Of the two Dick was the one most dreaded. He was so rapid in his movements, sometimes seeming to spring from the ground, again to drop from the trees and leap in the air like an athlete and doing his work so swiftly that the people scarcely knew what was happening until it was over and he was leaving them. Two or three times efforts had been made to rob the express box, but either the robbers were in too great a hurry, or the box had baffled their efforts, for the attempt had been abandoned and the attention of the bandits given to the passengers. No bodily injury had ever been done to any one, and in a few instances when some woman or old man had complained that all they had was taken from them, their purses had been tossed back to them by Dick, who would lift his hat gracefully and with a bound leave as quickly and mysteriously as he came. Long John was more deliberate, but stronger, and that Mr. Hardy single handed had put him to flight seemed incredible, and he was lionized and made much of, and the wish expressed by the passengers that he should go on to the valley, as with him they felt secure. At Chinese Camp, where they were to pass the night, he left them, with the assurance that, judging from the past they had nothing to fear from the marauders.

“I wish you were going with us. I feel so safe with you,” Fanny said to him when she stood for a moment alone with him in the narrow, dimly lighted hall.

She was standing directly under the hanging lamp, which showed her face pale with anxiety and fear.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, in a tone such as he would use to soothe a frightened child. “I know the habits of the wretches, and would almost stake my life against their molesting you on the trip to the valley. There may be more danger when you leave it. Better take the other road to Clarke’s. It is safer and pleasanter, and, one word of caution, don’t talk about your diamonds and where you keep them. You came near telling in the coach.”

“I know I did,” Fanny replied, “but I will remember in the future and I thank you so much for your advice. Good bye.”

She saw he was anxious to leave her and offered him her hand, which looked very small and white as it lay in his broad palm. For an instant his fingers closed over it with something like a slight pressure and his face was a study, as if two sets of feelings were contending in his mind with an equal chance for the mastery.

Dropping her hand he said, “Are your diamonds very valuable?”

“Yes,” Fanny answered quickly. “They are worth thousands of dollars and are sewed up in the ribbon bows of my hat. I don’t believe they would think of looking there. Do you?”

He laughed a hearty, ringing laugh, and when Fanny looked inquiringly at him he said, “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t help it. I thought you were not to tell where your diamonds were, and you have told me! But, never mind, you are safe. Good bye. I think we may meet again.”

He bowed and left the hotel, while Fanny joined her mother in the small room allotted them. There had been a long discussion between them as to the disposition of the diamonds during their absence from San Francisco. Remembering what Inez had said Fanny wished to put them in a safe deposit company’s vault while her mother insisted upon taking them with her. She didn’t know about San Francisco. If it were New York it would be different, and she wanted them with her. She was one of those nervous women who feel that nothing is safe unless they can see it. Her baggage was always taken to the hotel and to her room, if she was only to pass the night. She knew then where it was, and the diamonds must go with her to the Yosemite. She had left most of them in New York at Tiffany’s, and only had with her a small cluster pin, her rings and Fanny’s, and her large pear-shaped ear-rings,—the heirlooms which Mark Hilton had taken with him when he left Ridgefield and which were to be Fanny’s on her wedding day. After devising various places of concealment, Fanny finally decided to sew the diamonds in the knots of heavy ribbon on her hat, where their safety could be ascertained at any moment. This done, Mrs. Prescott felt quite secure and listened composedly to all that was said of the robbers. She had only brought money enough for the trip, and unknown to any one a part of that was twisted up in her back hair. She had nothing to lose or fear, and she slept soundly in her small quarters at Chinese Camp. Fanny, on the contrary, could not sleep and sat by the open window looking out into the night starting at every sound and wishing Mr. Hardy had not left them. She was not superstitious, but felt oppressed with a feeling of impending danger and wished many times that she was safely back in San Francisco.

At a very early hour in the morning the stage started, for there was many a mile of rocks and hills between the Camp and the valley, and the sleepy passengers shivering in the cool morning air took their seats, wondering what would befall them before the day was over. Nor were they in any degree reassured when, as they were ascending a long hill the driver suddenly stopped and announced to them, “This is where they had the hold-up and that the clump of trees the robber was behind.”

Involuntarily Fanny’s hand went up to her hat while the passengers shrank into their seats as if to escape a danger. Then, remembering there was none they looked curiously at the spot and two or three alighted and walked around the trees trying to conjecture just where the brigand stood before he made his appearance at the horses’ heads.

“If it had been the little one instead of the big one he wouldn’t have been drove off so easy. I tell you Dick is a terror. Why, they say he can jump straight up and land in the coach, or the box, either. Must have been a circus rider,” the driver said, while every passenger breathed a prayer to be delivered from the terrible Dick.

As long as they were in the open country they felt safe, but the moment they came near to ledges and woods they fancied a robber behind every tree and rock and were glad when as night was closing in they began to descend into the valley under the shadow of old Capitan and into a region of fertility and civilization. As soon as Mrs. Prescott was settled in her small room, which had once been a bathroom, and in which she declared she could neither breathe nor sleep, she made inquiries for Mr. Rayborne, the guide, as she wished to secure his services for herself and daughter whenever they went on trails:

“That is, if he is really as good as I heard he was in San Francisco,” she said to the landlord, who replied, “There’s none better in the valley. No, nor so good either. You see he’s a gentleman, and people like that, but I doubt if he is home. He has not been round the hotel for a week. His cottage is two or three miles from here. I’ll send and inquire.”

“And please,” Fanny began, “will your messenger take a note for me to Miss Rayborne. Do you know her?”

“Know Inez! I rather think we do,” the landlord replied. “Everybody knows Inez; the wild rose of the valley, we call her. I knew her mother, too,—a pretty little woman,—went off like a flash. Heart trouble they said. The whole neighborhood turned out to her funeral, visitors and all. The hill was black with ’em. John,—that is Mr. Rayborne,—has never been quite the same man since.”

He was inclined to be very talkative, but Fanny was in a hurry to write to Inez and finally left him in the middle of a sentence. When the messenger returned he brought a note for her from Inez, who wrote: “I am delighted to know you are in the valley, and sorry father is not here to guide you on the trails. Perhaps he will come before you leave. I am so lonely with only Nero for company. I thought of you when that robbery occurred and was glad you were not on the road. I have something to tell you about it when I see you. Father came home that night, but Tom has not been here since. I expect him in a few days. Write me when to come for you. Inez.”

Mrs. Prescott was a good deal disappointed that she could not have Mr. Rayborne for a guide, and because she could not she did not go on a single trail. As she cared little for scenery and there were but few people at the hotel of what she called her set she was ready to leave at any time.

“Not till I have made my visit to Inez,” Fanny said, and after they had been at the hotel a week it was arranged that she should spend a day with her friend and be taken up the next morning by the stage which was to pass the cottage and leave the valley by way of Inspiration Point.

CHAPTER VI.
AT PROSPECT COTTAGE.

It was one of the loveliest of all the summer days in the Yosemite when Inez drove up to the hotel in a buggy which had seen a good deal of service and was not like anything Fanny had ever ridden in. But she did not care. She was delighted to see Inez, who appeared at her best on her native heath and received the warm greetings of those who knew her with the grace and dignity of a young queen. Mrs. Prescott was invited to accompany Fanny, but declined, and the two girls set off alone for Prospect Cottage. Inez was very happy.

“I am so glad to have this little bit of you,” she said, giving a squeeze to Fanny’s hand and then dropping it again. “And we will have such a good time to-day all by ourselves. I haven’t much to do. I was up at four o’clock to get my work done, baking and all, and have made a lot of things I think you will like. One is huckleberry pie.”

Fanny had never seen one, but was sure she should like it, and anything else Inez chose to give her.

“It won’t be like the hotel, nor your New York home,” Inez said, “I do everything myself and oh, isn’t it lovely here among the mountains with this pure air which makes me feel so strong as if I should live forever.”

She was very enthusiastic and Fanny, who also felt the invigorating effects of the atmosphere, entered into her enthusiasm and enjoyed everything, from the wild flowers they stopped to gather, to the musical brook, which went singing along in its rocky bed beside the carriage road.

“This is our house,” Inez said at last, pointing to a cottage in a niche of the hills behind some trees which partially hid it from the highway which was below it at a little distance.

An immense dog came out to meet them, frisking about the buggy and barking his welcome.

“That’s Nero. You saw him at the hotel,” Inez said. “I leave him at home to watch the house when I go away. Good Nero, down, down,” she continued, as she alighted from the buggy and the dog sprang upon her, trying to lick her face.

“Please go right in; the door is open. I leave it so, with Nero. I must unharness my pony. I’m my own chore boy as well as maid,” she said to Fanny, who went into the cottage, followed by Nero, who, stretching himself upon the floor, whacked his big tail approvingly, as Fanny looked curiously around the room.

It was a model of neatness and order and showed many touches of a woman’s dainty hand and, what surprised her a little, had in it some articles of furniture more expensive than she expected to find among the mountains. The wide door opened upon a piazza which commanded a magnificent view of the mountains and the valley below. A honeysuckle was trained upon the rustic pillars and a bowl of roses and ferns was standing upon a round table near which were two or three chairs. This was evidently the living place of the family and Fanny sat down in one of the chairs to wait for Inez who soon came in flushed and bright and eager to talk.

“Yes, we sit here a great deal,” she said, in answer to a question from Fanny. “Father likes a piazza; it reminds him of his youth, he says, but he looks so sorry when I ask him about his youth that I don’t often do it, and I know very little of his boyhood. I asked him once if I had any relatives. ‘No’ he said, so short that I have never referred to them again. You must have a great many.”

“Very few,” Fanny said, and Inez continued: “Has your father been dead long?”

There was a moment’s hesitancy before Fanny replied: “Judge Prescott, who died last year, was my step-father, whose name I took when mother married him. She was a Miss Tracy, and my own father was Mr. Mark Hilton. He died in the mines of Montana when I was a baby. I do not remember him.”

“I am so sorry for you,” Inez said. “I wish you could remember him a little. You must resemble him, as you do not look like your mother.”

Fanny drew a long breath, and, with a thought of ’Tina, answered, “I am like one of my grandmothers.”

Slight as was her knowledge of the world Inez’s womanly instinct told her that Fanny did not care to discuss her family and she changed the conversation.

“I am going to get dinner now,” she said. “Would you like to see me? I don’t suppose you ever did a stroke of work in your life?”

“I never have,—more’s the pity,” Fanny said, as she followed Inez to the kitchen and watched her with the greatest interest, offering to help her.

“Not now,” Inez said. “You may wipe the dishes when dinner is over, and then we can have more time to visit.”

Fanny wiped the dishes after the dinner, in which the huckleberry pie had a conspicuous place, and left its marks on her mouth and teeth. When the work was done there was a ramble among the hills, a visit to Anita’s grave, which was covered with flowers and then, as the afternoon began to wane, the two girls sat down upon the piazza and watched the shadows deepening in the valley and the colors changing on the mountains from rosy tints to violet hues, while the sound of the waterfalls in the distance became more distinct as night drew on.

“Isn’t the world beautiful?” Inez said, “and isn’t it a joy to live. And yet I have a presentiment that I shall die young, like mother. She had heart trouble, you know, and I inherit it from her. A great shock of joy or pain might kill me. Then what would father do,—and Tom.”

This was the first time she had mentioned Tom, and after a moment Fanny said affirmatively: “You love Tom?” and into Inez’s eyes there came a bright, happy look as she replied, “I don’t mind telling you that I am going to marry him sometime when he gets a little more ahead and can leave his present business. It was settled last winter. He is a good deal older than I am, but looks younger than he is and I look older. Strangers take me for twenty at least. I have always known Tom and always loved him, I think. I have sometimes fancied that father was not quite pleased. He has never said anything except that Tom was too old for me and that I ought to see more of the world before marrying. Tom is my world. There is a pretty house in Stockton which he is going to buy, when he is able, where we can live in the winter, but we shall come back here in the summer.”

“What is his other name? I’ve never heard. You have always called him Tom,” Fanny said, and Inez replied, “Why, Tom Hardy. Funny you didn’t know, and he is the one who kept Long John from robbing the coach the other day. That is what I was going to tell you. I am so proud of him. The papers are full of his praises. Father says there is not another man in the valley who would dare attack that giant of a fellow. Tom hasn’t been home since, and I’m dying to see him. I have felt nervous every time I have thought of the risk he ran. What if he had been shot!”

Inez’s cheek grew pale as she thought of the danger her lover had escaped, and before she could say any more Fanny exclaimed, “Is that Mr. Hardy your Tom? I know him. He was on the coach with us from Milton to Chinese camp and told us all about it. I’m glad he is your Tom.”

Inez’s confidence with regard to Tom reminded Fanny of Roy, and in a few minutes Inez had heard all about him and the wedding which was to take place during the holidays.

“I am so glad for you. It is nice to be engaged,” Inez said; “Mr. Mason is of course very different from Tom, but I am satisfied with him, and I do hope he will come to-night and father, too. I think they will. I am keeping supper back a little in case they do, as they are always hungry. What is it, Nero?” she added, as the dog sprang up in a listening attitude, and then darted off through the brush towards the highway. “I believe he heard them. Yes, he did,” Inez cried, as a peculiar whistle, loud and clear, sounded in the direction Nero had taken. “That is Tom! He always whistles to let me know he is coming. I hope father is with him. There they are! Hallo, father! Hallo, Tom!” and she was off like the wind to meet the two men coming up the steep path from the road.

One was tall and walked as if he were tired, with his head a little bent. The other was short and slight and walked with a quick, springing step, as if he never knew what fatigue was. He was dressed differently from what he had been in the stage and there was a jaunty air about him generally, but Fanny would have had no trouble in recognizing him as the hero of the hold-up. Inez threw her arms around her father’s neck, kissing him many times; then, with a glance backward to see if Fanny were looking on she put up her lips for Tom to kiss, and holding a hand of each of the men came toward the house, swinging her arms and theirs back and forth like some happy child, while Nero bounded in front and barked his approval.

“Father, this is Miss Prescott, my friend I have told you so much about. She is spending the day with me,” she said, as Fanny came forward to meet them.

“My daughter’s friend is very welcome,” Mr. Rayborne replied, his voice so pleasant and the expression of his face so kind that Fanny was both surprised and fascinated.

She had not expected a guide to appear just as he did, and she let her hand rest in his a moment, while she looked into his eyes, which held her with their peculiar expression. When she first met Inez she had experienced a feeling as of looking at herself in a different guise, and the sensation returned to her in the presence of Inez’s father. Over him, too, there came a strange feeling of interest as he looked at her. She was not at all like Inez. She belonged to an entirely different world, of which he was once a part, years and years ago, it seemed, but which came back to him very vividly with Fanny Prescott standing beside him. He was always gentlemanly, but he seemed to gain a new access of dignity, which both Tom and Inez noticed, as with a few more words of greeting and a bow he left her and walked into the house. It was Tom’s turn now, and Fanny did not wait to be introduced to him.

“I know you already,” she said, “and I am so glad to see you again here, with——”

She glanced at Inez, who blushed and said, “She means here with me. I’ve told her about us. You don’t care!”

“Of course not; why should I?” Tom said, throwing his arm around her.

Disengaging herself from him, Inez said she must see about their supper and left him alone with Fanny. He was very friendly and talkative; asked when she came to the cottage and how she liked the valley and when she expected to leave. Then with a few commonplace remarks he, too, left her and she saw no more of him or Mr. Rayborne until supper was announced. When that was over they all repaired to the piazza, which a full moon was flooding with light. Nothing had as yet been said of Tom’s exploit in Fanny’s presence, but when alone with him in the kitchen Inez had caught his hand and said to him, “You don’t know how proud I was when I heard of your bravery. How did you dare do it? They say it was Long John,—almost twice your size. Wer’n’t you frightened?”

“A little, at first,” Tom replied, releasing himself from her and going out to a bench near the kitchen door where Mr. Rayborne was sitting and where he, too, sat down and began to talk in a low tone.

“He is so modest he does not wish to hear about the hold-up,” Inez thought, and was rather surprised when, after they were seated upon the piazza, Tom said to Fanny, “What of your diamonds? Are they still in the bows of ribbon in your hat?”

“Yes,” Fanny answered, “and I have sewed them in more securely, so I know they cannot drop out, and I don’t believe anyone would think to look for them there. Do you?”

“Hardly,” Tom said. “It’s a unique hiding place; and you leave us to-morrow?”

“Yes,” Fanny answered, “but not in the Milton coach. We are going to Clark’s to stop a few days and visit the big trees. You don’t suppose those dreadful robbers will waylay us on the route, do you? Long John, and little Dick! I shudder when I hear them mentioned. I wish you were going with us.”

“Can’t you go?” Inez asked, as the conversation progressed and Fanny became more and more nervous.

“I would willingly,” Tom replied, “if I had not an engagement, and besides I might not be of any use a second time. My hands would probably go up with the rest and stay up.”

“Nonsense, Tom! You know better. You would tear at them like mad. I wish you’d go. Your engagement will keep.”

“I’m afraid not, and thousands of dollars are involved in it,” Tom replied.

“Oh-h! So much money?” Inez gasped, thinking of the pretty house in Stockton, which Tom would soon be able to buy, if he were getting rich so fast.

“I do not think Miss Prescott need to feel any alarm,” Tom continued. “The road to Clark’s is perfectly safe. There are not as many rocks and trees to hide behind, and then the country is being thoroughly scoured to find the marauders. There is a larger sum offered for their arrest than ever before.”

“I hope they will be caught and hung,” Inez said energetically. “Some people think they live right around us, and know every foot of ground. I never told you, did I, that Mrs. Smithson said one of them was seen in the woods back of our cottage last summer. You and father were gone, and I was awfully scared. Do you believe they live here in the valley? Just think of talking with them and not knowing it!”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you had seen them hundreds of times,” Tom said laughingly, while Mr. Rayborne arose and went into the house saying it was getting chilly and he was tired.

He had taken but little part in the conversation beyond assuring Fanny that she had nothing to fear. The most of the time he had sat apart from the young people, with a look on his face which troubled Inez, who wondered why he was so silent.

“Are you ill, father dear?” she said, following him to the kitchen and putting her hand on his head.

“No, daughter,” he answered; “there’s nothing the matter;—a little tired, that’s all. Go back to your friend.”

“Isn’t she lovely?” Inez asked, still smoothing his hair. “I wish you could see her mother, she is so grand and handsome and proud looking. She wanted you for a guide, and because she could not have you she didn’t go on a single trail. She had heard you were a gentleman and preferred you to some of the rough guides in the valley. I wish you had been here.”

Mr. Rayborne was not particularly interested in Mrs. Prescott. He was more anxious for Inez to leave him and was glad when, with a goodnight kiss, she went back to the piazza and he was alone with his thoughts. He could not account for the feeling which had come upon him, bringing memories of people and events which had but little in common with what he was now. Through the open door came a breath of wind laden with the perfume of flowers from Anita’s grave, and as he inhaled it he thought of the dead leaves of a rose he had gathered long ago and been foolish enough to keep through all the years of change which had come and gone since he hid them away in the first stage of his youthful passion. Leaving the house he went to Anita’s grave and standing there alone with the dark woods in the background and the moonlight falling around him he talked, sometimes to himself and sometimes to the dead at his feet.

“Little Anita,” he whispered, “I wish I were lying beside you with all the past blotted out. And there is more of that past than you ever suspected. I loved you, Anita, and when your dying eyes looked at me I knew what they said and swore I would do your bidding. But a stronger will than mine has controlled me until now when I am trying to break the bands of steel. What is there in that girl’s face and voice and gestures which makes me struggle to be free. Is there a God, and would he help me if I were to ask him? I used to pray in the old church, miles and miles and miles away across a continent, but I fear it was only a form. God wouldn’t have let me fall so far if he ever had my hand in his. If I were to stretch it out now would he take it and help me?”

He put it out as if appealing to someone for aid; then dropped it hopelessly and said, “No, I’ve sinned too deeply for that. If I am helped at all I must do it myself, and I swear it here by Anita’s grave that not a hair of that girl’s head shall be harmed if I can prevent it, and I think I can. It says somewhere, ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you,’ but I guess the one who said it didn’t know Tom Hardy!”

It was late when he re-entered the house. Inez and Fanny had gone to their room and were asleep, but Tom still sat on the piazza, with his feet on the railing and his hands clasped behind his head.

“I knew he’d wait for me,” Mr. Rayborne said, “but I’ve sworn, and I’ll keep my vow, so help me God.”

He did not know that he had prayed and that God was helping him as he went to that midnight interview with Tom Hardy. There was an earnest discussion carried on in low tones lest the sleeping girls should be wakened. Then the discussion became more spirited, and angry words passed on Mr. Rayborne’s side. Tom always kept his temper, but was in deadly earnest and nothing could move him. He had no sentimental feelings, he said, with regard to a white faced, blue eyed girl, whom neither of them had either seen or heard of before, and did not propose to let a fortune slip through his fingers on her account. He had made inquiries and there had seldom been a richer party leaving the valley than was to leave on the morrow. If Mr. Rayborne did not choose to join him he would go alone.

“And if you do,” Mr. Rayborne replied, “by the old Harry I’ll circumvent you if I can, and if I can’t and you succeed I’ll give both of us up to justice and end this accursed life into which I allowed you to lead me.”

Tom laughed and replied, “I have no fear of that. You like your good name and your liberty too well to be willing to spend the rest of your days behind prison walls, an object of greater contempt because you have stood so high in the community, trusted and respected by everyone; and then there is Inez. Would you voluntarily ruin her life with a knowledge of her father’s shame?”

Tom knew what cords to touch to make the man like clay in his hands. For once, however, he had gone too far. The white faced, blue eyed girl, as Tom designated Fanny, was completing the work which Mr. Rayborne had for some time been agitating. She was Inez’s friend. She had been his guest. She trusted him, and she should not be harmed. But how to hinder it was a question which he revolved over and over again in his mind as, after leaving Tom, he sat by his window, suffering all the horrors of remorse, and once burying his face in his hands he cried, “God help me. He heard the thief on the cross; maybe he will hear me who am worse than that thief.”

The early morning was breaking in the east and on the mountains there was a glow of sunrise. Tom was up and Inez, too, busy with breakfast as the stage for Clark’s passed at a comparatively early hour. Mr. Rayborne had not been in bed at all and looked white and tired as he went out to the bench where he made his ablutions. Tom was there, trying to force down a feeling which was warning him of danger. Still he had no idea of giving up his enterprise. It had been planned for days in every particular, and he would not abandon it now. He would rather have Mr. Rayborne with him, if he could, although he was getting a little clumsy and sometimes handicapped his more agile companion with his deliberation. If he would not go, then Tom would go alone,—he was resolved on that,—and said so to Mr. Rayborne when they met by the rude washstand.

He had no fear of being circumvented by his colleague, and bidding him good-bye, kissed Inez, who came to the door just as his conversation with her father ended, and went down the hill whistling “The girl I left behind me,” while Mr. Rayborne looked after him with a feeling of pain and apprehension.

“I have sown the wind and am reaping the whirlwind, and I wish I were dead,” he thought. Then he repeated a name which only the winds heard. “What would he say, and he trusted me so fully. I am glad he don’t know. It would kill him. Nobody knows, but God and Tom. I am glad God knows; it seems as if he would show me some way to stop it.”

Just then Inez came to tell him that breakfast was ready, and bathing his hot face and eyes again in the cold water which trickled in a little stream down from the hills, he put on as cheerful a face as possible and went in to meet Fanny just coming downstairs with something in her smile which made him think again of the withered rose leaves and a summer he would have given much to recall.

“Where is Mr. Hardy?” Fanny asked, as she missed him from the breakfast table.

“He was obliged to go away very early on account of that appointment he told us about. He left a good-bye for you and bade me tell you he might perhaps meet you on the road,” Inez said.

“Oh, I hope he will. I grow more and more nervous about the journey,” Fanny replied, glancing at Mr. Rayborne, who was silent and preoccupied.

His head ached, he said, and finishing his coffee he left the table and the girls were alone.

“He is not himself this morning. He never is when he has one of his hard headaches, and this I guess is worse than usual,” Inez said apologetically. “Tom wanted him to go with him, and I think they had some words about it, for just before he left I heard Tom say ‘I believe you are a coward.’ Queer for father and Tom to quarrel.”

Fanny did not reply except to lament that Tom’s engagement must keep him from going with her.

“Perhaps father will go,” Inez suggested, and going out to the bench where he sat with his head down she said, “Can’t you go with Miss Prescott as far as Clark’s? The ride will do you good.”

Inez could not see how white he grew as he answered, “I go! I,—and meet Tom on the road?”

She did not know what he meant, and looked at him in wonder. Suddenly starting and brightening up he exclaimed, “It has come to me at last. You shall go to Clark’s and return on the late stage. If there is not room for you inside you can go on the box with the driver. That’s the best place for you. Keep your eyes out everywhere, and if a bandit attacks you, don’t throw up your hands, but scream in your natural voice.”

Inez could not understand why he was giving her so many directions. She only knew she was delighted to go.

“I cannot be of use like Tom, if anything happened,” she said to Fanny, “but father has told me what to do, and I’m not afraid.”

She hurried through her morning’s work, her father’s dinner was planned, and she was ready some time before the stage was seen in the distance a quarter of a mile away. Mr. Rayborne went with the girls to the road and waited until it drew up. Every inside seat was taken except the one reserved for Fanny. Mrs. Prescott who always looked out for herself, had appropriated a corner seat in the rear of the stage, where she could lean back against the cushion. She had a headache, as usual, and with her veil over her face she looked up enough to greet her daughter, who said, “Inez is going to Clark’s with us. There is not room for her inside, and I am going outside with her.”

Immediately a young man arose and offered his seat to Inez, whose father said in a low tone, “Stick to the box.”

“And I shall stick, too,” Fanny said. “The view is much finer outside, and Inez can tell me the places.”

The two girls were soon seated and the driver was about to start when with a roar Nero came down the hill, jumping at the horses’ heads and then at Inez.

“Here, Nero, here,” Mr. Rayborne called while Inez pleaded for him to go.

“I can bring him back to-night, and he never has a chance to go anywhere,” she said, but her father was firm and the dog followed him rather reluctantly to the house and disappeared in the direction of his kennel, which Tom had built for him.

“Nero is the last one to be there if anything happens. He is so affectionate and demonstrative and sure to mix in the melee that recognition would be inevitable, and I would spare Inez that, if possible,” Mr. Rayborne thought, as he sat down in his silent room, which had never seemed so lonely before. Nor had the past ever crowded upon him so thickly as it did now, filling him with remorse as real as it was bitter. Every leaf in his life was turned with its dark record from which he recoiled with horror. Away back in another world it seemed to him there were bright spots and he saw himself, looked up to and respected and happy, leading what looked to him an ideal life compared to what he was leading now.

“Oh, for those days. Oh, to be young again and innocent,” he said aloud, and his voice sounded so strange that he half started from his chair and looked around to see where it came from. “I don’t like being alone,” he said. “Nero is better than no company. I’ll call him.”

He went to the rear door, and called two or three times, “Nero! Nero!” then whistled, with the same result. Nero neither answered, nor came. He had gone to his kennel and lain down at first, then, as no one was about, he struck off into the woods, looking back occasionally to see if he were watched. Once in the woods and out of sight of the house he started rapidly in the direction of the road, keeping out of it until he saw the stage in the distance. Then he took the road, and in a few minutes was barking his delight at the horses and at Inez on the box. He had often tried to follow his master and Tom, of whom he was very fond, but had always been ordered back. Now, he had succeeded in eluding them, and was out for a holiday, which he enjoyed hugely, sometimes keeping near the stage and again making a detour into the woods and disappearing altogether for a time. When he did not return to the cottage Mr. Rayborne knew where he had gone. There might no harm come of it, and perhaps the dog’s presence would do good, he thought, and as the hours crept on he waited in feverish impatience for the news which he knew would travel fast if there were any news to travel.

CHAPTER VII.
ON THE ROAD TO CLARK’S.

It was a good road and a pleasant road and Fanny and Inez enjoyed themselves immensely. There was a halt at Inspiration Point for the grand view and a last look at the beautiful valley. Then the stage lumbered on slowly for it was full and the horses not the fleetest in the world. It had been cloudy for an hour or so, and after a time rain began to fall in a soft, misty shower. This roused Mrs. Prescott, who said Fanny must come inside, while the young man who had at first offered his seat to Inez insisted again that she should take it, while he went outside. The exchange was made and the young girls were riding side by side with their backs to the horses and Inez next to the wheels. The shower lasted but a few minutes before the sun came out so brightly that Inez, whose eyes were not strong, tied over her hat a thick, blue veil which concealed her face entirely. There was no thought of fear among the passengers. The road to Clark’s was considered safe and more than half the distance had been gone over. Mrs. Prescott was asleep in her corner; Fanny and Inez were chatting together as girls will chatter; Nero, tired of jumping at the horses and Inez, was off in the woods chasing a rabbit, and the driver had ceased to be on the watch for any trouble.

“We are gettin’ through all safe,” he said to his companion beside him. “It’s about time for them rascals to show up again, and I didn’t know what might happen.” They were nearing a sharp turn with a ledge of rocks beside it and he was gathering up the reins the better to manage his horses round the curve, when suddenly the word “Halt!” rang out on the air, and a man wearing a mask came from some quarter no one could tell where, he moved so rapidly and with so much assurance. Stepping to the horses’ heads he stopped them and pointing a revolver at the driver, bade him make no effort to go on.

“Little Dick!” was whispered among the terrified passengers, who never thought of disobeying his command, “Hands up, every one of you!”

They all went up, except those of Inez, close to whom the bandit was standing. At the sound of his voice she started violently, and clutched at the veil upon her hat trying to tear it off.

“I am very sorry, my good people, to disturb you, and I assure you none of you will be harmed, nor shall I detain you long if you at once give up whatever valuables you may have on you persons,—money, watches and jewelry. Perhaps I’d better search you myself, as it is not convenient for you to use your hands while you are holding them up. Step out quietly and it will soon be over. These two young ladies first, please. Shall I help you?”

He bowed toward Inez and Fanny, extending one hand to them and with the other covering them with his revolver. Fanny was paralyzed with fear, and half sliding from her seat, tried to hide behind Inez, to whom she said, “Oh, what shall we do?”

Inez made no reply. She had succeeded in tearing the veil from her face, which was white as a corpse, while in her eyes was a look of horror, but not of fear. Turning toward the man inviting her so politely to descend she gave a shriek more appalling than the word “Halt!” had been, and bounding from the stage in front of him, struck his arm so heavy a blow with her fist that his revolver was thrown at a little distance from him and lay upon the ground. Both started for it, but Inez reached it first. Snatching it up she looked steadily into his eyes, which the mask did not conceal.

“Go,” she said, “or I will shoot you like a dog. I always said I would kill any one I found doing this dirty work, and I have found you!” Then, to the passengers, who, in their fright, were still holding up their hands, she continued: “Drop your hands! Cowards! to fear this one man! You see I am not afraid of him.”

The man stood as if turned into stone, until she said to him again, “Go, I tell you, before I fire, or Nero sees you. He is here.”

This last was spoken so low that only the brigand heard it, looking round quickly and then back at Inez. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were blazing, and her white teeth showed between her parted lips as she advanced toward him like some enraged animal, with the revolver aimed at his head. It seemed as if he wanted to speak, but she gave him no chance, and at her second imperative “Go,” and mention of the dog, he went, not very rapidly at first, but walking like one whose strength had left him.

At this point Nero, who had given up his rabbit, came panting back, surprised, if dogs can be surprised, at what he saw. The passengers had all alighted and were surrounding Inez with warm encomiums for her bravery, Nero seemed to know she was the central figure in the group and gave her a loud, approving bark, which was heard by the bandit, who half turned his head and then quickened his steps to a run. But Nero, who had caught sight of him, was after him with yelps and cries and barks, which the passengers thought meant mischief. Inez knew better, and fierce as was her anger she would, if possible, prevent a recognition which would involve so much.

“Nero,” she tried to call, but her tongue refused to move, and she could only give a low cry of alarm as the dog bounded upon the back of the man, with such force that he was thrown down and his mask fell off.

In a moment he was on his feet, keeping his back to the passengers and beating Nero off, while Inez, who had found her voice, called to him peremptorily to come back, saying to those around her, “We do not wish to see him torn to pieces before our eyes.”

Very unwillingly Nero obeyed and came back just as the bandit disappeared among the trees. Up to this time Inez had stood rigid like one in catalepsy,—the revolver in her hand and her eyes strained to their utmost as she watched the receding figure. Her heart was beating wildly in her throat. There was the roaring sound of “Halt!” in her ears, shutting out every other sound so that she scarcely heard the words of commendation from those around her.

“Inez,” Fanny said, “don’t look so terribly! It is over now. He has gone. Sit down, before you faint.”

“Yes, that is best,” Inez gasped, while many hands were stretched out to keep her from falling, as her eyes closed and her body began to sway.

They put her down upon the grass and Fanny took her head in her lap, while every bag in the coach, which had a restorative in it, was opened, and its contents brought out. Brandy, whisky, camphor, cologne, bay rum, lavender water, witch hazel and hartshorn were tried by turns with no effect. She still lay in a death like faint and they could see the rapid beating of her heart as it rose and fell irregularly.

“Loosen her dress,” some one suggested. They loosened it and she breathed easier, but did not recover and her face was growing purple when the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard and Tom Hardy came leisurely galloping round the curve in the road on the bay mare Inez had driven the previous day.

“What is this? Another hold up?” he said, dismounting quickly and joining the excited group, each one of which began to narrate the particulars in his and her own way.

To those nearest to her Fanny said in a low tone, “He is her lover, and the man who saved the other coach as she has saved us.”

It scarcely took an instant for this to become known to all, and Tom was at once nearly as much an object of interest as Inez, and a way was made for him to go to her.

“Why, it is Inez! How came she here?” he asked in a perfectly steady voice, but his face was white and his hands shook as he knelt by the still unconscious girl, calling her name and rubbing her cold face.

At the sound of his voice she opened her eyes and looked at him with an expression of loathing and despair.

“Oh, Tom, Tom,” she cried, and the anguish in her voice haunted Tom to his dying day.

“I am here, Inez,” he said, very tenderly. “What can I do for you?”

She made no reply, but looked up at Fanny as if asking what she knew or suspected. Fanny suspected nothing, and her tears fell fast and hot upon Inez’s face, which she kissed again and again until a faint color came back to it; the heart beats were less rapid, and she tried to get up. Every one was ready to help her, Tom with the rest, but she motioned them all aside, and standing erect said with an effort to smile, “I have made quite a scene. My strength gave out at last. I am all right now. What became of my hat?”

Three or four hurried to bring it to her, while Tom said to Fanny, “Where is yours?”

It had fallen off in her excitement and lay at some distance from her where it had been stepped on two or three times and badly crushed. Tom picked it up, brushed it very carefully, straightened it as well as he could and then put it on Fanny’s head, saying, as he did so, “I think it is all right.”

He seemed much more cheerful than at first, and patted Nero on the head, saying, “You here, too? I wonder you did not go after the ruffian.”

“He did,” Fanny explained, “and knocked him down and would have torn him to pieces if Inez had not called him off.”

“Why did she do that? She might have let him hold the villain till he was captured. There are surely enough men here to have secured him,” Tom said, speaking so low that Inez did not hear him.

She was leaning against a tree, with Nero at her side. He had seemed suspicious of Tom and declining his advances had gone to Inez, looking at her inquiringly as if asking the cause of the commotion.

“I wish he had held him,” Fanny said, vehemently, “but I wish still more that you had met us earlier and this would not have happened. You ought to have seen Inez when she sprang over the wheel and confronted the robber. She was grand and her eyes were terrible as she marched straight up to him as if she were not a bit afraid. I think she would have fired if he had not turned and ran.”

Tom made no reply except to say, “I wish I had come earlier,” then, addressing Inez he asked if she would go on to Clark’s, or go home.

“I must go home,” she answered quickly. “It is the best place.”

Fanny at once offered to go with her, but Inez declined.

“No, no,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

“How will you go? You cannot walk so far,” someone asked, and Tom replied, “She will take my horse and I shall walk.”

By this time the driver was getting anxious to be off. and the passengers gathered around Inez, bidding her good bye, telling her they should never forget her bravery, and calling her the heroine of the valley, as Tom was the hero.

“Don’t, don’t,” Inez said, putting up both her hands. “Don’t thank me. I didn’t think of saving anybody. I was wild. I was desperate. I—I am not a heroine. Don’t talk about me. Don’t let them put me in the papers. I can’t bear it.”

There was a hard look on her face which softened when Fanny came up to say good bye. Drawing her closely to her Inez sobbed like a child.

“It was so bright yesterday, and this morning I was so happy. It is so dark now, and will be always. Good bye, and God bless you. I don’t believe I shall ever see you again.”

“Yes, you will,” Fanny answered. “We are to spend a few days at Clark’s, and if you do not come there I shall drive over and call on you, and then there is New York in the future.”

Inez shook her head. She knew there was no glad future for her and her tears fell like rain as she watched Fanny getting into the stage, helped by Tom, who lifted his hat very politely as the stage drove off, the passengers looking back and waving hands and handkerchiefs to Inez until the turn in the road hid her from view. Nothing was talked of the rest of the way but the attempt at robbery and Inez’s wonderful courage and presence of mind.

“We ought to do something to show our appreciation; make up a purse, perhaps, if she is poor,” some one suggested, and Fanny quickly interposed, “They are not poor in that way. Money would be out of place. Make her a present which she can always keep.”

This met with general approval, and it was decided that as soon as Fanny returned to San Francisco she should purchase a handsome watch, with Inez’s name and the date of the attempted robbery on the case. The money was to be contributed at Clark’s, where the stage arrived nearly an hour behind its usual time. All the passengers were to continue their journey that day except Fanny and her mother. The latter was in a state of utter prostration and went at once to her room and to bed. During the scene on the road she had sat half fainting in the coach, alighting once when all the rest did and then, seeing she could be of no use, creeping back to her corner and feeling that she was doing her duty when she passed out her golden stoppered salts as her contribution to the many restoratives offered to Inez. Her trip to the Yosemite had not been very pleasant, and she was glad she was so far on her way back to the city which suited her better.

“I shall always feel grateful to that girl,” she said to Fanny, as she was getting into bed. “She saved us from a great unpleasantness. Think of being ordered out of the stage and searched by a masked blackguard with a revolver in your face. He would have found nothing of value about me except a few dollars. The diamonds were safe in your hat. I watched it all the time until it rolled off into the mud. Mr. Hardy picked it up. I did not see him very closely, but thought he seemed a very gentlemanly fellow, who had seen more of the world than that girl he is to marry. I think he could do better.”

Fanny did not hear the last of her mother’s remarks. In her fright and excitement over the robber and Inez she had not given the diamonds a thought until her mother brought them to her mind. Her hat was still on her head and snatching it off she passed her hand over the bows of ribbon in quest of the little linen bag. IT WAS GONE! The strong thread with which it had been sewed to the hat had been wrenched apart from the ribbon and it had slipped out, when or where no one could tell. The diamonds were lost, and the hotel was soon in a state of nearly as great excitement as there had been on the road. Many suggestions were offered, one of which was that when the hat was stepped on by the heavy boots of some of the party, as it evidently had been, the stitches had given way and the bag fallen out. This seemed feasible, and with a gentleman and a guide from the hotel Fanny went back to the scene of the adventure, looking all along the road and going over every inch of ground near the spot where the stage had been stopped. There were footprints of the people and Tom Hardy’s horse and a spot in the spongy soil where Nero had stretched himself at full length, but the diamonds were not there. Very unwillingly Fanny broke the news to her mother, who at once went into hysterics so violent that a physician was called, and all that night Fanny and Celine were kept busy attending to her. It was not the value of the diamonds she deplored so much, she said, although that was great, as the fact that the ear-rings had been in the family so long and were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day. Fanny, too, was very sorry for her loss, but thought less of it than of Inez, whose face haunted her as she last saw it, so white and drawn, with an expression which puzzled her. She would like to have driven over in the early morning to inquire for her, but her mother was too weak and nervous to be left and she was obliged to wait for the daily stage which she hoped would bring her some news.

CHAPTER VIII.
MARK HILTON.

When the stage disappeared from her sight Inez was standing as motionless as a statue, with a look in her eyes which made Tom half afraid to go near her.

“Inez,” he said, at last, as she did not move. “Inez, shall we go now?”

“Bring up the mare,” was her answer.

He brought her, and pointing to the stump of a tree near by Inez continued, “Take her there.”

He took her there, and held out his hand to help Inez mount. She motioned him aside and seated herself in the saddle, which did not inconvenience her at all, as she was accustomed to it. She was shaking like a leaf, but did not know it or feel any fatigue as she started on the road, followed by Tom and Nero. The latter alone seemed to have any life in him. He was glad to go home and showed his gladness by barking and jumping alternately at Inez and the mare. At last, as no attention was paid to him, it seemed to occur to his canine sagacity that something was wrong and had been all the time, and he, too, subsided into silence and trotted demurely by Inez’s side. Once when a feeling of dizziness came over her, making her sway in the saddle, Tom, whose eyes were constantly upon her, put his arm upon her waist to steady her. Recoiling from him as from a viper she said, “Don’t touch me, Tom Hardy, nor speak to me until this mood is past. Your revolver is in my pocket. Father says there is murder in my blood, and I might kill you.”

Tom fell back behind her, while she straightened herself and sat erect as an Indian, but made no effort to guide the horse, who took her own gait, a rather slow one, with which Tom could easily keep pace. What his thoughts were during that long walk it were difficult to guess. His hands were in his pockets and his head was down, hiding his face from Inez, who glanced at him once as the mare stopped a moment under the shade of a tree and he passed on in advance. If, as her father had said, there was murder in her blood, it was boiling now and had been since she bounded from the coach.

“I could rid the world of him so easily,” she thought, and her hand went into her pocket, but with a sob which seemed to rend her heart in two, she drew it back, and whispered, “I have loved him so much. I cannot harm him now.”

They had reached a point from which the cottage could be seen, with her father on the piazza looking in their direction. At sight of him Tom turned to Inez and said, “You are not to despise your father as you do me. I led him into it. I am to blame.”

Inez made no answer, but her face softened a little; then hardened again when, as she drew near the cottage, she saw her father coming to meet her. He had felt all the morning that the crisis he had so long expected was close at hand. The net of sin he had woven was closing round him and, but for his daughter, who believed in him so fully, he did not care how soon it enfolded him and he stood unmasked before the world which now respected him so highly.

The reader has, of course, long suspected that Mr. Rayborne and Long John and Mark Hilton were one. How he came to be what he was he could scarcely tell. He had loved Helen Tracy devotedly. He sometimes thought he loved her still in spite of the bitterness which had sprung up between them, he hardly knew how or why, as he looked back upon it. She had thought herself safe with him because he knew the worst there was of her. But because he knew it he was, after the first few months of feverish adoration were over, more on the alert, perhaps, than he should have been. He did not trust her and she knew it and grew restive under his watchful surveillance. He had no right to distrust her,—no right to be jealous,—no right to criticise her actions, and because he did, she, in a spirit of retaliation, taunted him with his birth and position and poverty, until he could endure it no longer and left her, half resolving, before a week was passed, to go back, for his little baby daughter had, if possible, a stronger hold upon him than her mother. Then his pride came up and he said, “I’ll stay away till she sends for me. She knows where I am.” But she did not send, and from some source he heard she was getting a divorce. This hurt him more than all the hard words she had ever said to him, as it cut him off from her forever. But there was still the baby. “For her sake I’ll be a man and some day I’ll go to her and tell her I am her father,” he thought.

Alas for the mistakes which change the current of one’s whole life. Chancing upon a Chicago paper in which were comments upon the recent divorce of “the beautiful Mrs. Hilton, so well known in fashionable circles,” there was mention made of her recent bereavement in the death of her little girl. Mark could not remember when he had cried before, but he did so now. Everything was swept from him,—his wife, his home, and his infant daughter.

“God has turned against me, if there is a God,” he said, “and I care nothing what becomes of me how.”

For days he was in a most despondent mood, scarcely eating or sleeping, and paying but little attention to anything passing around him. Jeff, who had come with him from Chicago, roused him at last by suggesting that they go to the mines of Montana. Although so young, Jeff was beginning to have a great influence over Mark, who felt so discouraged and hopeless that it was pleasant to lean upon some one even if it were a boy. They went to Montana and into the mines, but on the day of the accident both were away at some distance from the scene of the disaster, prospecting for themselves. When the news reached them and Mark heard that he was supposed to be dead and that Jeff was missing, it was the latter who said, “Let’s stay dead and missing, and take another name, and go on further west or south, and begin new with the world. I think it will be fun.”

The boy’s advice was followed, and John Rayborne and Tom Hardy went to California, where Anita Raffael came in Mark’s way. She was an orphan,—alone in the world,—with no home but the convent in which her father had placed her at school before he died. With Mark it was at first only pastime to talk to the little half Spanish, half Mexican, when he chanced to meet her. Then something in her lovely face and soft, dark eyes began to appeal to him, and he accidentally discovered how much he was to her, and how forlorn she was in her convent home, where she was like an imprisoned bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage in its efforts to escape. No one was unkind to her; no one could be, she was so gentle and sweet. She was unhappy because she wanted freedom, and when Mark asked her to be his wife, she took him gladly, and was so loving, and happy and gay, that he never repented the act. She was not like Helen, nor was he like the Mark Hilton who had won the famous beauty. He was John Rayborne, and Anita was his wife, and their home was in the Yosemite, where she persuaded him to go, for she loved the wild, mountain scenery and made their cottage a bower of beauty, with her skillful hands and perfect taste. When she heard of a stage robbery she would get furious and stamp her little feet and denounce the robbers in her broken English, while Mark laughed at her excitement and asked, “What would you do if I were to take to the road some day?”

“Kill you first, and then die myself,” she answered, with no more thought that such a thing could be than Mark himself had then.

For a time he drove the stage in the summer between Milton and the valley, and was once or twice stopped on the road when Jeff was with him on the box. Thus, both “knew the ropes,” as Jeff said, criticising the manner of the attack and pointing out a better way, while Mark laughed at him, and without meaning what he said, suggested that he try it.

Giving up stage-coaching, he became a guide, and then——. There was a deep, dark gulf after the then, and he always shuddered when he recalled the day when he joined Jeff in what he called a mere lark. Jeff had tried it alone, and, unknown to Mr. Hilton, to see if he could do it. He had profited by what he had seen on the road and laid his plans carefully as to what he would do in certain circumstances. As a boy he had picked pockets for fun, and he stopped the coach on the same principle, finding that the gymnastic performances of his youth were a help to him in the rapidity with which he could do his work and disappear. The stage which was the object of his first attempt was chosen because there was only one passenger in it, a clergyman, who had prayed aloud while he was being searched.

“The old cove’s watch was silver, and he had only twenty-five dollars in his purse, and I gave them back to him. I never meant to take a blessed thing, and my revolver wasn’t loaded,” he said to Mark to whom he related his adventure.

The boy, who had horrified Uncle Zacheus by saying he’d like to be a robber and had astonished Alice by offering to pick her pocket, had developed into a man with a will so strong and a manner so enticing that Mark was like clay in his hands. It was, however, some time before he was persuaded to try what he could do at a hold-up. He found he could do a great deal. The excitement and danger were exhilarating, especially when Jeff was with him and by his wonderful activity bewildered the passengers until they could have sworn there were half a dozen men instead of one demanding their money. It was exhilarating, too, to help search for the brigands and hear all that was said of them and make suggestions as to the best means of capturing them. The downward grade once entered upon, it was comparatively easy to continue it until he was steeped in crime so deep that to go back seemed impossible. Sometimes when Anita’s arms were around his neck he would put her from him quickly with a feeling that he was not worthy to touch one so pure and innocent and who trusted him so implicitly. It would kill her if she knew the truth, but she never should know it, he thought, and for her sake and his daughter’s he was deciding to quit his mode of life when her sudden death paralyzed for a time every faculty of his mind and left him without the ballast he needed.

Returning home late one night after an absence of two or three days he had been talking with Jeff of a recent robbery and the necessity there was to keep quiet for some time to come, the country was so thoroughly aroused and so large a price was offered for the capture of the men. A slight sound, more like the cry of a wounded animal than of a human being, attracted his attention, and hurrying into the next room he found Anita senseless upon the floor. She had been sitting up after Inez was in bed hoping he might come home and had fallen asleep so that she did not hear him when he came in; neither did he see her, or suspect that she was in the next room. His voice must have awakened her, but what she heard he never knew. That it was enough to kill her he was sure. Everything which he could do for her he did, but although she recovered her consciousness she never spoke again except with her eyes which followed him constantly and were full of the horror she could not express. After she died he remained at home the entire summer, but when the next season came round Tom persuaded him to take up the old life, which would give him excitement if not peace of mind. Many were the ruses resorted to to throw people off the track should they ever chance upon it. The attack of Mark upon a stage and Tom’s defence was one of them, planned by Tom, who was ringleader in everything. No one suspected them and their popularity hurt Mark nearly as much as suspicion would have done. But nothing touched him like Inez’s faith in him. She was his idol, on whom he lavished all the love he had ever given to Helen and Anita. Of her engagement he secretly disapproved. That Tom would leave nothing undone to make her happy he knew, but that his beautiful young daughter should marry a man for whose capture thousands of dollars were offered was terrible. But he was powerless. To betray Tom was to condemn himself, and either would kill Inez as her mother was killed.

And so matters were drifting when chance threw Fanny Prescott in his way and something about her reminded him of the days when he had walked with Helen Tracy through the woods and pastures of Ridgefield, and when Uncle Zacheus had believed in him implicitly, disclaiming all taint of heredity which might have come to him from ’Tina. He had no thought that Fanny was his daughter, but she was like the people he used to know,—like Helen and Alice and Craig, and she sent his thoughts back to them with a vividness which almost made him feel that he was like them again. He would not harm her, nor have her harmed.

“It’s no use talking,” he said, when Tom unfolded his plan of stopping the coach in which she was to leave the valley. “I’m tired of it all, and would give half the remainder of my life if the scroll could be unrolled and all the black writing erased.”

To this resolution he stood firm, wondering what he could do to prevent the catastrophe. It came to him like an inspiration to send Inez with the driver, knowing that with her tall figure she would be readily seen from the point where Tom would probably stand concealed and make his observations. That something might happen he feared when he found that Nero had gone after the coach. He would recognize Tom and springing upon him in his delight, as he had a habit of doing, he might unmask him and the secret be revealed. To threaten to do this himself was one thing, and to have it done was another, and he was waiting impatiently for the result when he at last saw Inez coming up the path on the bay mare. Her face was pallid as a corpse and her eyes so unnaturally large and black that he could see their blackness in the distance and felt himself shrinking from meeting them. Tom was near her, with his head bent down and his feet dragging heavily as if walking were difficult for him.

“I must face it,” Mark said to himself, and hurrying to meet them he asked what had happened.

“Don’t ask me, and don’t touch me,” Inez answered, motioning him away. “Tom, your colleague, will tell you.”

She sprang from the horse and went into the house without looking at her father, who turned to Tom for an explanation.

CHAPTER IX.
MARK AND TOM.

The explanation was given concisely and fully, with nothing added or withheld. As he listened Mark felt that he had neither strength, nor muscle, nor nerve left. His sin had found him out, and the iron grip of the law could not have hurt him as he was hurt with the knowledge that Inez despised him.

“You think she knows everything?” he asked in a strange voice, for his tongue felt thick and heavy.

“Everything. The game is up, and I wish I had died before I began it; died in the old hogshead where I slept when you found me,” Tom replied.

He was shaking with cold, notwithstanding that drops of sweat were on his face and hands, and his hair was wet as if drenched with water.

“It is an accursed business,” he went on rapidly, “and I am sorry I dragged you into it. I was never so bad as some might think and I did it less for gain than for the excitement of seeing half a dozen men cower before a little fellow like me and a pistol which half the time was not loaded. That was the case to-day with the revolver Inez picked up and held at my head before she pocketed it. You should have seen her when she bade me go before she shot me like a dog. I never loved her as I did at that moment when I knew I had lost her. Once on the road when she seemed about to fall from the saddle and I tried to help her she threatened to shoot me again, reminding me that my revolver was in her pocket. Do you remember how I used to stand on my head when anything sudden pleased me? Well, I felt like trying it again when I imagined Inez’s surprise to find the chambers empty if she tried to kill me. She said you had told her there was murder in her blood. Do you think that Dalton woman’s fingers were tingling to shoot me?”

Tom was talking at random, scarcely knowing what he was saying. But it did not matter. Mark was not listening to him. He had heard all he cared to know and was wondering how he could meet Inez and what she would say to him. He knew she had gone to her room, but could hear no sound of her moving. Once the thought came to him, “Is she dead? Has the shock killed her as it did her mother?” and he started to go to her. Then as he heard the opening of a window he resumed his seat. Outside, the bay mare had been patiently standing waiting to be cared for, and at last, as the care did not come, neighing loudly and pawing on the ground. Mark heard her and rising mechanically went out to her, glad of something to do, which would for a few moments divert his mind from himself. Over the mare’s stall a halter was hanging, and Mark looked at it attentively and tested its strength and wondered if it would hold him and how he would look dangling there, and if his feet would not touch the floor and so defeat his purpose. Satan was tempting him terribly and might have won the victory if there had not come to him a second time that day thoughts of Ridgefield and the old man who had loved and trusted him, and who, he had no doubt, had prayed for him when he supposed him still alive. The north piazza of the Prospect House, with Craig and Alice and Helen and the pleasant hours spent there came up before him and brought the tears to his hot eyes, cooling and healing and driving the tempter away.

“’Tina’s great-grandson must not hang himself. That would be heredity with a vengeance,” he said, laughing an unnatural laugh. “Only Inez knows it, and my whole life shall be devoted to convincing her of my repentance,” he thought, as he left the stable.

There was a grain of comfort in this, and the future did not look quite so dark as he went back to the house and sat down with Tom, who neither moved nor looked up at him as he came in. He, too, was thinking of the future and the past; of Ridgefield and his happy boyhood there; of Mrs. Taylor’s teachings, which, although occasionally emphasized with a box, had lodged in his memory, and were repeating themselves over and over in his brain. But beyond all this was a thought of Alice, who had been so kind to him,—who had defended him against Mrs. Tracy, saying there was no harm in him and she would trust him anywhere.

“What would she think of me now, all smirched and stained as I am? Would she speak to me as she did that morning when we gathered the pond lilies and she smoothed my hair?” he thought, and his hand went up to his head to the spot where Alice’s hand had rested so long ago. “I can feel it yet,” he said to himself. “It kept me then from mischief; it shall help me now.”

Then he thought of Inez. She was lost to him so far as the life he had hoped for was concerned. He might in time learn to live without her, but he could not live and see her cold and hard towards him as she had been that morning.

“I would rather die,” he thought, “than know she would never again look upon me except with hatred and distrust.”

Had he been in the stable and seen the halter which had suggested suicidal thoughts to Mark there might have been a tragedy added to that day’s doings. But the halter was out of sight and Tom wrestled with his remorse, which, to do him justice, did not arise alone from the fact that Inez knew and despised him. He was genuinely sorry and could not understand how he had become what he was. In his nature there was enough of hopefulness for a rebound from the depths of despair if he saw a ray of light, and after sitting for more than an hour in perfect silence he arose and going up to Mr. Hilton said, “If we were in a boat that was sinking, we’d get out of it, if we could. Let’s do so now. We have been on the down track and touched the bottom. Let’s try the upward slope. Let us be what the world thinks we are,—honorable, upright men. I have helped to pull you down. I will try to help you up, and maybe——I don’t think I ought to take His name on my lips, but you know whom I mean, and He, perhaps, will help us. I used to learn a lot about Him in the Sunday School in Ridgefield, and it is coming back to me now. What do you say? Shall we strike hands on a new deal? No one knows but ourselves and Inez. She will not tell. We shall carry the burden of our secret always, but maybe it will grow lighter in time.”

He offered his hand to Mr. Hilton, who took and held it a moment, but said nothing. He was still shifting the blame to some extent upon Tom’s shoulders and cursing himself for having been so weak as to be led by him. Releasing Mark’s hand, Tom began walking across the piazza with his hands in his pockets, when he touched something hard and started as if a serpent had stung him.

“By George, I had forgotten this in my excitement,” he said, taking out a small linen bag and laying it upon the table which stood upon the piazza. “See,” he continued, taking out the diamonds Fanny had guarded so carefully.

In an instant Mr. Hilton was on his feet and facing Tom threateningly.

“Tom, you villain!” he exclaimed, “you robbed her after all, and have been prating to me of a new life and Sunday School lessons learned in Ridgefield. You hypocrite, I could strike you dead, if it were not for adding murder to my other crimes! Why did you do it, and how?”

Tom could not resent Mark’s anger, and could scarcely speak aloud as he replied. “I don’t know why I did it. When I picked up her hat and straightened it and felt the stones something I could not resist made me take them. My fingers tingled as they used to do in Ridgefield when I picked pockets for fun. A legion of devils were urging me on and all the while I was saying to myself ‘I shall get them back to her somehow,’ and I will. They must be very valuable.”

He held up the ear-rings which glowed and sparkled in the sunlight, emitting sparks of color which played upon Mark’s face, which was ghastly now with a cold sweat standing upon it and a look of terror in his eyes. Surely he had seen those jewels before,—so large, so white, so clear, and pear shaped, with the old fashioned setting which Helen would never have changed. He could not be mistaken. He had seen them too often and clasped them in Helen’s ears too many times not to know them now.

“Tom,” he said in a whisper, for his throat seemed closing up. “Tom, these are the Tracy diamonds,—my wife’s diamonds. Don’t you remember them?”

Tom had been too young when he left Mrs. Hilton to know much about her jewelry. It came back to him now, however, that her ear-rings were very large and of a peculiar shape. These might be the same, and if so how came Fanny Prescott by them? He put the question to Mark, who did not answer. The conviction that he had Helen Tracy’s diamonds was strengthening every moment, and if so who was Fanny Prescott? Something like half the truth began to dawn upon him, making him so faint that the ear-rings dropped from his hands and he sat down gasping for breath. That Helen had married again and that Fanny was her daughter he suspected, but not that she was his. That little child was dead. He saw it in the paper. This girl was Helen’s. Helen had been near him,—in the valley,—past his house,—and he had not known it. He did not care for her, he thought, but he did care for her daughter, if the girl were her daughter.

“Inez may know something. I must see her,” he said, starting for her room.

Once on the stairs he stopped, afraid to meet her. Then, knowing it must be he went on and knocked at her door.

CHAPTER X.
INEZ AND HER FATHER.

When Inez heard Tom’s voice and saw him standing near her she knew him at once and felt for a moment as if her heart stopped beating; then there was a sensation as if it were turning over rapidly, as she had seen a wheel turn in machinery, and swelling as it turned, until her throat was full and she could not breathe. Of what happened next she had only a confused recollection. Somebody shrieked, but whether it was herself, or Fanny she did not know. Somebody leaped from the stage and confronted Tom with a revolver. That was herself. She was clear on that point. She had threatened to shoot him and knew there was a feeling in her heart which would have let her do it, if he had not gone as she bade him go. Then Nero came, and with him a reaction of feeling and her thought was to save Tom from recognition, for he was still the man whom she loved, and she called the dog back and watched Tom till he disappeared from sight, straining her eyes while he was visible among the trees as if she would hold him as long as possible, for never again could he be to her what he had been. Then a great darkness came over her and she felt Fanny’s tears upon her face and heard the sound of many voices talking of her, and among them at last Tom’s; Tom, himself, in the clothes he had worn away that morning, when he kissed her good-bye, as he would never kiss her again. The impulse to kill him was gone. She must save him now from suspicion, for more than he was involved in the terrible thing which had happened.

Rallying all her strength she saw the stage depart leaving her alone with a despair which made her cover her mouth with her hands lest she should cry out and bring her friends back to her. With a feeling of disgust she drew away from Tom’s touch when he would have helped her and felt again a disposition to kill him if he came near her. All her Spanish and Mexican blood was at fever heat, nor did it abate at the sight of her father who was equally guilty with Tom. Ignoring his offer of help she went at once to her room and threw herself upon the bed in an agony of despair. Everything had been swept away, leaving a darkness so profound that she could see no light in the past or future. She loved Tom. She worshipped her father, and had been so proud of both, and both were brigands. She said the word to herself, pressing her hands first upon her temples, which throbbed with pain and then clasping them over her heart which burned like fire and beat so loudly that she could hear every beat and thought it sounded like a muffled drum.

“Brigands!” she repeated, while from every corner of the room the word came back to her till the air was filled with it.

She understood everything, for her mind had gone rapidly over the past, gathering up proof here and there until all was plain to her,—the double lives of the two men, who were all she had to love, and the knowledge gave her nearly as much shame as pain that she should have been so deceived. She knew now why her mother died so suddenly, with that awful look on her face as her palsied tongue tried in vain to speak. She had discovered the truth and it had killed her.

“Happy mother, to die!” she moaned. “I wish I could die too. Oh, father, I thought you a king among men, and Tom, too. I was so happy yesterday and this morning, with no thought that I was a brigand’s daughter,—that the men I wished could be caught and hung were father and Tom! Oh, I cannot bear it. I feel like a debased creature, whom no one would speak to, if he knew, and I loved Fanny so much, and she liked me some. But that is all over now. Tom meant to rob her, the only girl friend I ever had—Oh-h! I cannot bear it.”

Her agony was intense as the horror grew upon her and she was burning with excitement and fever. There was a feeling in her as if she could not breathe, and every heart beat was like a heavy blow. She had opened a window and she tried to rise again and go to it for air, but could not, and she fell back upon her pillow with her eyes staring at the pointed ceiling of her room. It was a pretty room, furnished with many articles her father had bought for her and which she knew were expensive. Fanny had liked it and her presence there had lent a halo to everything. But Inez loathed it all now, knowing where the money came from which had bought these luxuries which a poor mountaineer’s daughter ought never to have.

“I can’t stay here. I must go away and earn my living somewhere,” she was thinking, when she heard her father’s knock upon the door.

He was coming to explain, she thought, and she did not want an explanation. Nothing could change the shameful facts, and she did not look at him as he came in and sat down beside her. Her hand was lying near him and she drew it away quickly as if afraid he might take it. He saw the motion and interpreted it aright.

“Inez,” he began, “have no fear that I will touch you. I am not worthy to sit in the same room with you, and I am not here to make excuses; I want to ask what you know about Fanny Prescott. Who is she? I mean, who was her mother?”

Inez was too stupified and bewildered to wonder at her father’s question and replied, “Her mother was a Miss Helen Tracy, of New York. Judge Prescott was her step-father, whose name she took when her mother married him. Her own father was a Mr. Hilton, who was killed in the mines of Montana when Fanny was a baby—Father, father, what is it? What is the matter?” she exclaimed, as her father fell forward upon the bed. Everything was for the time forgotten in her anxiety for him as he lay like one dead.

“Tom, come quickly,” she cried, “Father is dying.”

But life was strong within him, and he soon recovered, but tore his cravat from his neck and unbuttoned his vest to help his breathing, which was nearly as labored as Inez’s had been.

“Tell me again who she is! Tell all you know!” he said, while Tom looked inquiringly at him and at Inez, who repeated what she had said of Fanny Prescott.

Tom, who was standing up, dropped into a chair as if he had been shot, while Mr. Hilton exclaimed, “Oh, Inez, Fanny is my daughter and your sister! For I am Mark Hilton—married first to Helen Tracy and divorced when our baby was a few months old, I thought she was dead. I heard so. Oh, my daughter, my daughter!” he cried in alarm at the look on Inez’s face as she listened to him. He had told everything with no thought of the effect it might have upon her. She had borne all she could bear, and with this fresh blow she lay for hours, not fainting, but dying it seemed to those who cared for her so tenderly,—the wretched father, the remorseful Tom, the kind neighbors who had been called in, and the doctor summoned from a hotel. The news of her bravery in confronting the robber had spread rapidly and the shock it must have given her was the cause assigned by the physician for the state in which he found her. There was also heart difficulty inherited from her mother, aggravated by the strain upon her nerves, he said. She was young. She might pull through, but the utmost care must be taken not to excite her in any way. All night a light shone from the window of the room where she lay with no sign of life except a feeble fluttering of the pulse and a low moan when her father spoke to her. Once when an allusion was made by some one to the adventure on the road and the belief expressed that the robbers would be captured if the whole state rose up to do it, she opened her eyes and looked at Tom, who was sitting at the foot of her bed. Her lips moved with a sound her watchers construed into “Do,” but which Tom, with his senses quickened and on the alert, knew was “Go,” and meant that he should fly before he was captured. But he was not that kind and would not have gone with Inez dying if he had known that all the police in San Francisco were on their way to take him.

Just as day was breaking there was a change for the better, and the women, who had cared for Inez during the night, left with a promise of returning as soon as possible. When no one was in the room but her father Inez whispered, “I want Fanny.”

“Yes, daughter,” Mark answered, feeling himself a strong desire to see her.

Then he remembered that if he would secure the daughter he must meet her mother,—once his wife. Could he do it, stained with sin as he was, and to find whom every foot in the valley had been gone over. There were placards out now he was sure in San Francisco and Stockton, offering thousands of dollars for his capture and that of his confederate. He had seen them before, and with Tom had stopped and read them, but never with a feeling that it was really himself that was meant. It had always been somebody else. Now it was himself,—Mark Hilton,—who was wanted, and he could not meet Helen face to face. It was true she would not know the depths to which he had fallen. She would only be surprised to find him alive and very low down in the scale from what he was when she called him her husband. He could bear her look of proud disdain after her first fright was over, but, knowing himself as he did, he feared he could not meet her without betraying himself in some way. Tom could do it, and Tom must go. But Tom refused outright, and Mark was nearly beside himself.

As the morning wore on Inez grew more and more restless, asking for Fanny and if she had come and if they had sent for her. About noon the doctor came and found her fever so high that he said to Mr. Hilton, “If that young lady can come she may save your daughter’s life.”

Mark could hesitate no longer. “I am going for Fanny,” he said to Inez, “and will certainly bring her back.”

He found the hotel full of excited people, all talking of the hold up of the previous day and all inquiring for Inez, of whose serious illness they had heard when the morning stage from the valley came in. He was told that Mrs. Prescott was in her room, but Fanny had gone with a party to visit the big trees.

“I am not a card man now,” he thought, as he said to a servant, “Tell Mrs. Prescott that Mr. Rayborne wishes to see her,” and then sat down to try to quiet his nerves which tingled as if red hot lead was pouring through them.

It was years since he parted from Helen in bitter anger, but he was not thinking of that time now. His thoughts were back in Ridgefield and the summer morning when he saw her on the north piazza and fell under the spell of her wonderful eyes. He could see the mischief in them now as they had looked when she said to Uncle Zach “Which is Mark and which is Craig? You did not tell me.” He could see Craig dropping his straw into his tumbler of lemonade as he sprang up to meet her and himself knocking his head against Craig’s as each seized the same chair for her. He remembered, too, the rose in her ribbons and knew that somewhere among his belongings the faded leaves and dried calyx were hidden away. It was strange how every detail of that morning came back to him as he sat waiting the return of the servant, who, when he came, said to him, “The lady will see you. Second floor, No. —, to the right.”

CHAPTER XI.
MARK AND HELEN.

Mrs. Prescott had nearly recovered from the fright of the previous day, but had not felt equal to joining the party to the Big Trees. She seldom joined any party. Her room was comfortable and she preferred to stay in it, and when Mark’s message was brought to her she was sitting by her window watching some people who had just arrived.

“Mr. Rayborne?” she repeated. “Who is he? I know no such man.”

“He is the father of the young lady who saved the coach yesterday,” the servant replied.

“Oh, yes, I remember now. Show him up,” Mrs. Prescott said, with a feeling of annoyance that she was to be bothered with so commonplace a man as Mr. Rayborne must be.

As she had been in her room all the morning she had not heard of Inez’s illness and really had not thought much about her, as the loss of her diamonds was uppermost in her mind. Of course she was grateful to her for what she had done and by and by when she felt equal to it she meant to write her a note and tell her so. She had contributed generously towards the watch to be bought for her and should make her some present on her own account. This she thought quite sufficient without a call from the father. Then it occurred to her that he might have come with some news of the diamonds, or at least he could be of use in finding them, and she was more willing to see him.

“I wonder what kind of man he is,” she thought. “Rough, of course, though they said he was well educated and very gentlemanly for a guide,” and immediately her old nature began to assert itself.

There was enough of coquetry left in her to wish to look her best before any man. Going to the glass she pulled down her frizzes a little more in order to cover some rather deep lines in her forehead,—straightened her collar, pinched her cheeks to bring more color to them,—threw a fleecy white shawl over her shoulders and sat down with her back to the door. The carriage was now driving away and she was still watching it, when a voice she had never forgotten and which made her start from her chair, said to her “Helen.”

For a few moments Mark had been standing in the open door looking at her to see if she had greatly changed.

“A little faded, but very handsome still and proud as ever,” he thought, as he saw her profile and the pose of her head and shoulders.

He had loved her with all the strength of his youth, and though there was a gulf between them which could never be crossed, something of the old feeling prompted by memories of the summer days in Ridgefield stirred within him as he watched her. She had expected Mr. Rayborne to knock, and at the sound of her name she sprang up and turning looked for a moment steadily at the intruder, while her face grew white as her shawl.

“Who are you?” she asked, taking a step towards him.

“Have I changed past recognition? I should have known you anywhere,” he replied, with a smile she could not mistake.

“Mark,” she whispered, for she could not speak out loud, “How came you here, when you have been dead so many years?”

“To you, yes,” he said, coming nearer to her. “To you, yes; but very much alive to myself and others. That notice of my death was a mistake. I was not in or near the mine, but I let it pass. I preferred to be dead to you and my old life. With Jeff I came to Southern California, taking another name and marrying a little Spanish girl, Anita——”

“Marrying, when you knew I was alive! Oh, Mark!” Helen interrupted him, while the hot blood stained her cheeks and the fire which leaped into her eyes made her like the Helen Tracy of his Chicago home when she was roused.

Mark smiled at this flash of jealousy and replied, “You forget the divorce which made me free to marry. It was kind in you to see that I had that privilege. You sent me a copy of the decree you know. And then you married again. Why shouldn’t I? Anita was very lovely and sweet. She is dead.”

“I thought you dead, too,” Helen replied, angry with him, angry with poor little Anita, and angry at herself for showing her anger. “Where did you come from, and why are you here?” she asked, glancing at the door in fear lest Fanny should come in.

“Didn’t the servant tell you Mr. Rayborne wished to see you?” Mark said.

“Mr. Rayborne, yes; but not Mr. Hilton. Are you Mr. Rayborne? Is that the name you took?” she asked, and he replied, “Yes, I am Mr. Rayborne, and I am here at Inez’s request. She is very ill,—dying, we fear,—the shock was so great. She wishes to see her sister.”

For an instant Mark’s eyes, which usually moved rapidly from one object to another, were still and held the woman as if a spell were thrown over her. With a sensation of numbness in every limb Helen gasped, “Inez, your daughter! and sister to my Fanny! How do you know that?”

She was almost prepared to deny Fanny’s paternity, but Mark’s reply prevented it.

“Fanny told Inez that her own father, Mark Hilton, whom she could not remember, was killed in the mines of Montana and that she took Judge Prescott’s name when her mother married him. Do I want more proof than that? I suppose you changed her name from Frances to Fanny, which was natural enough. Sit down. You don’t look able to stand.”

He brought her a chair and put her in it with his old-time courtesy of manner, while Helen began to cry. To find Mark alive was not so bad. Indeed, she was glad, for his supposed death in the mines had always weighed upon her as something for which she was in part responsible. But to find him a guide, a mountaineer, was galling to her pride. Her Apollo had fallen from his pedestal, not only in position, but in looks. He was still fine looking, but there were signs of age about him which her quick eye detected. His hair was tinged with grey, and he was not as erect as when he carried her through the rain. He had grown old and Helen found herself feeling sorry for it and sorry that he had lost the jaunty, city air he had when she last saw him. All this, however, was nothing to the fact that he had another daughter, who was Fanny’s sister and whom Fanny would claim at once if she knew of the relationship. She must not know, and Helen was about to speak, when Mark said to her, “You remember that the divorce was mentioned at some length in the gossiping papers, and in one of them sympathy was extended to you for the loss of your little daughter.”

“Yes,” Helen answered. “She was very ill and said to be dead by one of the nurses. The reporters were very busy and seized upon every item, whether true or false. The story was contradicted in the next day’s issue.”

“Just so. I saw the first, and not the last, and thought her dead. With her gone and you lost to me, as you were, and with no home or friends, it is not strange that I wanted to get away and be forgotten,” Mark said. “In California it is comparatively easy to do this. For a long time I would not look in a New York or Chicago paper if one came in my way, and so I missed seeing the announcement of your marriage with Judge Prescott and supposed you were still Mrs. Tracy, if living. I believe you dropped my name when you dropped me.”

Helen assented, and he went on: “There is no look in Fanny’s face like you, or like me, but she interested me strangely when I saw her, and sent my thoughts back to Ridgefield and to you, and the long ago, which I could wish blotted out, if it were not for Fanny and the love she and Inez bear each other. I have never heard a word of you since I came to California and did not know whether you were dead or alive. I have avoided eastern people lest I should stumble upon some one who knew me. I have acted as guide unwillingly, for fear of meeting an old acquaintance. Fortunately I never have. I had no suspicion that Fanny was my daughter until yesterday, when Inez came home, more dead than alive and I asked particularly about her friend. Inez’s mother died with heart trouble, which she inherits. I have always known this and tried to guard her from strong excitement. The fright yesterday was too much for her and she does not rally from it.”

“Does she know of—of—the relationship?” Helen asked falteringly, as if the word hurt her pride.

“I told her when I learned who Fanny was; she is very anxious to see her sister. Can she go?” Mark said.

“No, oh no,” Helen cried, wringing her hands. “She must not go. It would all be known,—the relationship, I mean. She thinks you dead. Let her think so. She knows all about you—way back.”

“To ’Tina?” Mark asked, and Helen answered him, “Yes, to ’Tina. I told her everything when Judge Prescott died. I had to, she was so persistent after she knew a little. She is to marry Roy Mason, son of Alice and Craig. You remember them?”

It was a strange question to ask, and Mark laughed as he answered it.

“I have reason to remember Craig, as he has me. I suppose you have met him often. I should like to have seen the first meeting.”

“It was nothing to see,” Helen answered. “He was Alice’s husband and any love he ever had for me was dead, as it should be.”

“And you didn’t try to see if you still had power to move him?” Mark said ironically, while Helen’s eyes flashed with anger.

“What do you take me for? I had been divorced and widowed as I supposed. I was Judge Prescott’s wife, and we met almost as strangers. I would as soon think of moving the Sphinx, as I used to call him, as of moving Craig Mason. Are you satisfied?”

Mark bowed and asked, “What has Fanny’s engagement with Craig’s son to do with her going to Inez?”

“Much,” Helen replied. “The Masons are very proud, and I don’t know what the result would be if they knew of your change of name and of a daughter who would claim relationship with Roy. Leave Fanny alone, I beg, and go your way.”

She was standing before him with tears in her eyes which looked just as beautiful as they had looked twenty years ago, and he might have yielded had there been no one but himself to consider. When he remembered Inez he was firm as a rock.

“We will let Fanny decide. I will wait for her,” he said, and turned to leave the room.

Helen called him back. She knew the result if the matter were left to Fanny. Nothing could keep her from Inez.

“Mark,” she said again, going close to him and putting her hand on his arm.

He felt it through his coat sleeve and wanted to take it and wanted to shake it off. He did neither and said to her, “Well, what is it?”

“You are a man of honor,” she replied.

He knew he wasn’t, but rejoined, “Well?”

“And you are a gentleman,” she continued.

Mark thought of the many times she had told him he was not a gentleman, but he merely repeated the word “Well?” while she went on: “If I let Fanny go, promise not to tell her who you are. There’s no knowing what she would do, and I could not bear to have everything come out as it would with Fanny calling you father and all that. I did many wrong things when we lived together, but I never meant half as bad as I talked, and when I thought you were killed in that dreadful way I was very, very sorry. I was going to stop in Montana on my way home to see if I could find any one who knew you. I am telling you this to show you that I am not as bad as you think. Let the past be dead and buried, and don’t let Fanny know. Will you, Mark?”

She had both hands on his arm now and was looking at him with an expression he could not resist.

“I promise that neither Inez nor I will tell her,” he said, “but do you know how hard it will be for me to see her and not tell her I am her father?”

“Yes, I know; but it is better so. You must see that it is.”

He did see it when he remembered what he was,—a man from whom Fanny would shrink, if the veil were lifted as it had been from Inez.

“Fanny shall not know from me,” he said, and with this fear gone Helen began to speak of what all the time had been in her mind,—her diamonds.

Had Mark heard that they were lost from Fanny’s hat and could not be found? “My ear-rings were with them. You remember them? I was going to give them to Fanny on her wedding day.”

Every word she said cut like a knife, but Mark managed to answer naturally that he had heard that the diamonds were lost and to assure her that he would do whatever he could to find them and so would Mr. Hardy.

“Oh, yes,—Mr. Hardy,—your daughter’s fiancé,” Helen rejoined,—“the young man who saved a coach from being robbed as your daughter saved ours. Fanny thinks highly of him.”

Mark responded with a bow, and something in his face made Helen ask quickly, “Mark, is Tom Hardy Jeff?”

“Yes, but let him stay Tom Hardy until he chooses to declare his identity himself. He will try to trace your diamonds,” Mark said, in a constrained voice.

Helen bowed her acquiescence, but looked puzzled. Everything was puzzling,—everything annoying,—and her brain was in a whirl, making her wish to be alone.

“Good bye,” she said to Mark, bowing him from the room. “It is too late for Fanny to go to the cottage to-night, but you will see her to-morrow. Remember your promise.”

She was trembling so she could scarcely stand, and when he was gone she threw herself upon the couch and sobbed hysterically for the trouble which had come upon her so unexpectedly. In the heyday of her youth and beauty, when her path was strewn with bruised hearts she had asked ironically if there were not a passage in the Bible which said “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ saith the Lord.” When Mark deserted her and she went through the notoriety of a divorce, she had felt that she was being paid, but that was nothing to this last instalment of the payment, and the proud woman writhed under the chastisement, indignant at Mark,—she scarcely knew for what, unless it was for having married Anita, and indignant at Inez for being Fanny’s half sister. It was some time before Fanny came, and when she did she found her mother in bed in a chill, with cramped hands, blue lips and cold feet, and Celine attending to her with hot drinks and hot water bags and shawls. It was some time before Mrs. Prescott was sufficiently quiet to tell her of Mr. Rayborne’s visit and Inez’s serious illness.

“I dare say he exaggerated the case and probably the girl is better by this time,” she said. “I promised you should go and see her to-morrow, but if I feel as I do now, I cannot allow it.”

Fanny, who had heard of Inez’s illness before she came up to her mother, made no reply, but in her little wilful heart she said “I shall go,” and she did. She knew her mother’s nervous condition, which she could not understand, would not last long, and that Celine would do all that was necessary. Probably she should not stay more than the day. It would depend upon how she found Inez, she said to her mother, at whose bedside she stood just as it was growing light. It was a long drive to the cottage, and as she wished for as much time as possible with Inez she had stipulated with the landlord to have a conveyance ready for her at a very early hour.

“Good bye, mother,” she said, “I am going now. You look a great deal better than you did last night. Celine will take good care of you till I come back. Good bye.”

She stooped and kissed her and then hurried away, while Helen began to cry, not so much because Fanny had gone, as from a growing conviction that the truth would come out, and then, what might not Fanny do? Acknowledge her father, of course, and probably insist upon taking Inez to New York and introducing her as her sister. The thought brought on a nervous headache which kept her in bed all day, bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never come to California. Mark would keep his word, she was sure, but she distrusted Jeff, whom she had never liked. And he was Tom Hardy, and Mark was Mr. Rayborne. The change of names affected her unpleasantly and when at last she fell asleep they kept repeating themselves over and over in her troubled brain,—Mr. Rayborne and Tom Hardy.

CHAPTER XII.
FANNY AND INEZ.

Inez, who had passed a restless night, had been told the conditions on which Fanny was permitted to come to her, and this detracted somewhat from her anticipated pleasure in having her there. But her father had given his word, and it was sacred to her. All night Mark had staid by her, while Tom sat outside, trying to devise some means of returning the diamonds without exciting suspicion. He could hear Inez every time she moved or spoke, and that was some comfort. Once, during an interval when the pain in her heart was not so great, she said to her father, “Tell me how it happened, and when? The other marriage, I mean, and tell me about Tom,—when he was somebody else.”

Mark, who shrank from this ordeal which he had feared might come, said to her, “You are not strong enough, daughter. Wait awhile.”

“No,” she answered. “There is no waiting for me. I want to know now how you came to marry that proud lady. Were you like her? Like her people, I mean? and was Tom with you?”

Very briefly Mark told as much of his story as he thought necessary, omitting ’Tina and the finding of Tom in Boston where he rescued him from the street. Everything was softened and the life at Ridgefield dwelt upon at length, while Inez listened as to an interesting romance. It did not seem quite real to her that her father was once in a position so different from that which he now occupied. The change of names troubled her and twice she repeated “Mark Hilton,—Jefferson Wilkes,” as if accustoming herself to the sound. Once when her father made an allusion to the present as if to explain, she said, “No, no. I can’t bear that, now or ever. There is no excuse. You are my father, and I must love you always,—and Tom, who is not Tom at all!”

Tom was on his feet and in the room in a moment, standing where she could not see him, as she went on very slowly, for her breathing was difficult.

“It seems odd, but I am glad you were once a gentleman like those at the hotel, and lived in a grand house like Fanny’s, but I like better to hear of the woods and river and meadows and ponds in—what was the place?—Where Tom gathered the lilies.”

“Ridgefield,” Mark replied, trying to stop her as he saw how exhausted she seemed.

“Let me talk while I can,” she said. “I can’t speak of the past when Fanny comes if she is not to know you are her father. No one need to know it or the change of names. You are Mr. Rayborne, and Tom is Tom. I cannot think of him as Jeff, or you as Mr. Hilton. You are father and he is Tom till I die.”

“She does care for me a little. Thank God for that,” Tom thought, as he crept back to his post on the stairs.

It was beginning to get light, and not long after sunrise a buggy driven by an employee from Clark’s stopped at the foot of the hill leading to the cottage. Mark saw Fanny as she ran up the path, and went to meet her. In her flushed, eager face there was a look which he had seen often in his own face when he was a boy, and this it was which made him call her “My child” as he led her into the house and told her how low Inez was and how necessary that she should be kept quiet and not excited in any way.

“Her mother died of heart trouble. Inez may go the same way if we are not careful,” he said.

“I will be very careful,” Fanny answered, as she followed him to Inez’s room.

The curtains were drawn over the windows, but it was light enough for Fanny to see the great change in Inez. Her eyes were sunken, but unnaturally bright. There was a drawn look about her mouth and her cheeks had lost much of their roundness, but were red with fever spots, which contrasted sharply with the pallor of her lips.

“Fanny, oh Fanny! I am so glad you have come,” she said, trying to rise and opening and shutting her fingers rapidly. Then exerting all her strength she threw her arms around Fanny’s neck and burst into tears while her father tried to quiet her. “Don’t stop me,” she said. “I must cry or my heart will burst, and my head, too,—it aches so hard. Fanny, Fanny! You don’t know all your coming to me means. Now put me back on my pillow and sit where I can see you without turning my eyes. I am tired all over.”

Her arms fell helpless on the bed and she scarcely seemed to breathe.

“I don’t understand it,” Fanny said in a low tone to Mr. Hilton.

Inez heard her and before her father could reply she whispered, “Don’t try to understand, or speak of it. Just sit by me.”

All day Fanny sat by her, knowing that whenever Inez’s eyes were open, they were fixed on her with a look which began to make her uncomfortable.

“What is it, Inez? Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked at last.

Inez did not answer at once, but her hand moved slowly towards Fanny’s, which chanced to be lying on the bed near her. For a time she regarded it intently, evidently contrasting its whiteness and softness with her own larger brown hands.

“We are not much alike, but you love me and are not ashamed of me,” she said.

“Ashamed of you!” Fanny repeated. “Why should I be?”

“And you will stay with me? It can’t be long,” Inez continued.

“Yes, I will stay,” Fanny answered involuntarily.

Then she remembered her mother, who was expecting her back that night, or the next day, at the farthest. What would she say?

“I’ll stay a week any way. Inez must be better by that time,” she thought, and wrote to her mother to that effect, suggesting that if she were not comfortable at Clark’s she go on to San Francisco, where she would join her later.

Mrs. Prescott was greatly agitated when she received this note, and insisted that Celine should go to the cottage and bring Fanny away. She would have gone herself, but for the dread of meeting Mark again and being compelled to see Inez and possibly Tom. She could not go, but Celine must. Celine, who had been in the family since Helen was a young lady, understood her perfectly, and understood Fanny too. If the latter had made up her mind to stay with Inez, she would stay, and after a little she succeeded in making her mistress see that it was better to let her daughter alone.

“But I shall not go to San Francisco and leave her behind. I am very comfortable here and shall stay till she joins me,” Mrs. Prescott said, adding after a moment’s thought, “I don’t know what the surroundings are at that cottage. Plain, of course, and not what Fanny is accustomed to. She will be worn out with the watching and the change. I think you’d better go and see to her.”

This was a great concession and Fanny felt it as such when she received her mother’s letter offering Celine.

“It is kind in you, mamma,” she wrote in reply, “but Celine is not necessary. There is a woman in the kitchen and I don’t know what I should do with a maid. I am waited on now by everybody as if I were a princess, and Inez couldn’t see strangers. Keep Celine for yourself, and don’t worry about me.”

After the receipt of this note Mrs. Prescott settled down to wait Fanny’s pleasure and fret at the prolonged delay. Inez did not improve, except that her voice was a little stronger and Fanny could talk with her longer at a time and not tire her. One day after the stage had passed Tom brought a small package sent from San Francisco to Inez in care of her father. It was the watch which a lady had been commissioned to buy as a testimonial of the gratitude of the passengers who had been in the stage on the day of the hold up. Fanny had hoped to select it herself, but when she saw it she felt that she could not have chosen better. It was a little diamond jeweled stem winder, with Inez’s name on the inside lid and the date of the hold up.

“Something for you from San Francisco,” Fanny said as she put the box on the bed before Inez, whose eyes grew very bright and questioning when she saw what it contained.

“A watch! the thing I have always wanted. How did it come to me? I don’t understand,” she said.

Fanny explained why it was sent and how glad the passengers were to send it. It was the first time any allusion had been made to the attempted robbery. Mr. Hilton had warned Fanny not to speak of it and she had been careful not to do so. Now she said as little as possible and was glad that Inez did not seem greatly excited.

“I’ll keep it under my pillow,” she said, and several times that day Fanny saw her looking at it, particularly at her name and the date. “I wish ‘July —’ wasn’t there. It brings the dreadful day back to me, and I see him and hear him and hear my scream, which must have filled the valley,” she said.

“You will get over that when you are stronger,” Fanny suggested.

“Maybe,” Inez replied, and Fanny noticed that after that the watch lay a little away from her instead of under her pillow.

The next morning Inez handed it to her, saying, “Will you think me foolish if I ask you to take it away. Doesn’t it tick very loudly?”

Fanny did not think so, and Inez continued: “I had father put it on the bureau and the table and at last in the drawer last night, but I could hear it saying ‘halt, halt,’ just as he said it. I am sorry, but I can’t bear it. Take it away.”

With a feeling of disappointment Fanny took it from her and said, “Shall I give it to Mr. Hardy to keep for you until you are better?”

“No, no; oh no, not to Tom; anything but that,” Inez exclaimed, and greatly puzzled Fanny put the watch in her travelling bag down stairs where she was sure the fancied halt could not be heard.

Inez’s attitude towards Tom had troubled Fanny from the first. She never asked for him, and if he came into her room and spoke to her, his visit was sure to be followed by a chill, or headache. At last Fanny spoke of it to Mr. Rayborne, who replied, “Inez is rather fanciful. It is part of the disease to turn against your best friend. Perhaps Tom had better stay away.” After that he staid away, but Fanny frequently found him near the door when she went out and in.

“I am here to see if there is anything I can do,” he said in explanation, offering to go for whatever she wanted and saving her many steps up and down the stairs.

Towards her father Inez’s manner was different. She seldom spoke to him, but she allowed him to sit by her and once she took his hand with a look in her eyes which he could not misunderstand, and he said to her, “Yes, daughter, I promise before Heaven that work is finished for me and Tom, too. I can answer for him.”

Fanny’s step was heard outside and he stopped abruptly, but Inez seemed brighter and better for what he had said. He was constantly in the sick room, frequently sitting in the shadow where he could see not only the fever stained face with the sunken eyes in which the shadow of a great horror was still visible, but the fair, blue eyed girl who filled him with pride and an intense desire to take her in his arms and call her his daughter.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE SISTERS.

Ten days passed and there was no real improvement in Inez. Occasionally she would rally and inquire about the household matters, showing that she had some interest in them, but these moments were always followed by sinking spells when life seemed nearly extinct. The doctor was greatly perplexed.

“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.”

It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the word Ridgefield and wondered how Inez knew anything of that place.

“I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him.

The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it. While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.”

For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?”

Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. He is Mark Hilton, your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.”

Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not. The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her mother had described. She had regretted that she could not remember him, and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him, nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman, but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina. There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss me!”

Mark felt as if all his life which he would forget were slipping from him and leaving him the man he used to be, while he held his daughter to him and cried over her as if his heart were breaking. When he grew calm he told her all he wished her to know of himself since he parted from her mother, whom he screened as far as possible from blame. After her father left her Fanny returned to the piazza and sat down alone to think and try to realize what she had heard and the new position in which it had placed her. One fact stood out vividly before her. Inez was her sister, and she was glad, and began to build castles of the future when Inez would be able to go to New York. No thought of separation occurred to her. Inez was hers to care for. With the advantages of a city she would make a brilliant and beautiful woman. She was much younger than she looked. A year or two at school would be desirable and then she would live with Fanny and Roy, “and marry Tom?” Fanny whispered interrogatively.

There was no one to hear,—no one to answer,—except Fanny herself, who began to rebel against a marriage which before had seemed suitable enough, if the parties were satisfied. She had admired Tom for his apparent bravery, his pleasant face and genial manner, but as a brother-in-law he was not so desirable. She could mould and cultivate Inez, but not Tom. He was too old. She must take him as he was, if she took him at all; not as Tom Hardy either, but as Jeff Wilkes, who, her mother had told her, was a strange boy with strange ways, whom she had never liked. That her father had changed his name displeased her, but she did not resent it in him as much as she did in Tom, who she felt nearly sure had suggested it. But he was Inez’s fiancé. She must accept him and make Roy accept him, too. She did not anticipate much trouble there. Roy would think what she wished him to think, and Tom was really better looking than half the men of her acquaintance if they were shorn of their city dress. This comforted her, and when at last Tom came out and talked to her as he could talk when he chose, she began to feel quite reconciled to him as a prospective brother-in-law.

It was too late for her to see Inez that night, but very early in the morning she was at her bedside, calling her sister and telling her how glad she was and that now she must get well fast so as to go to New York in September, when she and her mother went home.

“No, Fanny,” Inez said. “I shall never go to New York. It is lovely in you to suggest it and to be glad I am your sister. You don’t know what joy it is to have you call me so, and to believe you love me. In some circumstances I might have gone with you for a while, for I should like to see the eastern world where father and Tom were born. He must be Tom to me always, and it will not be long. I am going as mother did, only not so sudden. I am younger and stronger, but I know I am dying. I feel as if part of me were dead already and there is nothing to rally from. The tree struck with lightning twice does not recover. I have been struck twice, once in the stage when——oh, Fanny, I can’t talk of that without my heart standing still. The second shock was different and came when I heard that father and Tom were somebody else, and you my sister. I was so weak that it was like another blow. For your sake I’d like to live, although our paths would be apart. Yours in the great, busy world, and mine here with father. I wish I could see your Roy, but it is too much to think he would come across a continent.”

Inez had thought all this out the previous night after her father told her that Fanny knew of the relationship, and now that she had said it she sank into a state of great exhaustion, during which Fanny staid by her and every time she put her hand on Inez’s head, or spoke her name, the sick girl’s eyes opened with an expression of unutterable joy, and the pale lips whispered “My sister!”

That night Fanny wrote to her mother: “I know everything from ’Tina to the present time. Tom has told me that Mr. Rayborne was Mark Hilton, my father, and Inez my sister. My father told me the rest, and I do not believe there is anything more for me to learn about myself. At first I prickled all over and could scarcely speak. Now I am very calm and glad and should be happy if Inez were not so low. I think she is going to die, and I cannot leave her. I shall write to Roy to-morrow and tell him everything. I hope he will come. I want him to see Inez.”

After this Fanny devoted herself entirely to Inez, taking quite as much care of her as the hired nurse. But it was of no avail. Inez grew weaker every day and baffled both the physician from Stockton and the specialist from San Francisco, who had been called to see her. That there was serious heart trouble, complicated with slight paralysis, both agreed, but neither could understand why the stage fright alone should have affected her so strangely. If love and care and tenderness could have given her back her life she would have had it, but nothing could save her. Every night she seemed weaker, and every morning her face looked thinner and her hands more transparent as they lay just where they were put, for she had but little power to move them now.

“They are almost as white as yours, but not so small,” she said one afternoon to Fanny, who was rubbing and bathing them. “They have been strong hands and done a heap of work, but will never do any more, and it is better so. I’ve thought it all over and do not want to live. I’d rather go to mother, who is waiting for me. She’ll be glad to see me. I know what you want to say,” she went on as Fanny tried to interrupt her. “You would take me to New York and try to make a lady of me like yourself. But I am not like your people. I could never be like them and they would wonder how you came to have a sister like me, and tongues would be busy and you would feel hurt, and Roy, too. I should like to see him before I die. Do you think he will come?”

Fanny had not heard from him since she wrote and told him of Inez and her father and it was time she received a letter. She was quite sure, however, that he would come, “and take me by surprise, most likely,” she said to Inez, who was exhausted and disposed to sleep. Fanny, too, felt the need of rest and air and went out upon the piazza to enjoy the sunset. She was very tired and a little homesick, with a great longing for Roy. “If he would only come,” she was thinking, when in answer to her thought Roy came rapidly up the walk and stood at her side.

CHAPTER XIV.
ROY.

Fanny’s letter had reached him in Ridgefield, where, with his father and mother, he was spending a few days at the Prospect House. Its contents electrified them all and no one more than Uncle Zach.

“Mark and Jeff both alive!” he said. “I never b’lieved Jeff was dead. He ain’t the kind, but for Mark, that I sot such store by not to be killed is queer and I’ve mourned for him as I would for Johnny. And he took another name, and married another woman and had another girl! I didn’t think that of Mark! No, marm, I didn’t. And he is Fanny’s father? I’ll be dumbed! I’d like to see him, though, and Jeff, too. Like fust rate to see him turn a summerset on the grass again. Give ’em my respects and tell ’em to come home and bring that girl if they want to. Ridgefield air and Dot will soon bring her round. She must be a clipper to spring at a robber like that. No wonder she’s got heart disease. It makes mine wobble round to think of it.”

Uncle Zach had his remarks mostly to himself, as Roy was talking excitedly to his father and mother of the journey he was going to take at once.

“Fanny needs me, and I am going,” he said, and he started that night, and several days later reached Clark’s very hot, very tired, very dusty, and very impatient to see Fanny. “You say she is still in the mountains. How long does it take to get there?” he asked Mrs. Prescott, whom he had surprised as she was taking her lunch in her room.

She was very glad to see him, for she was getting tired of waiting for Fanny and anxious as to what the result of the waiting might be. She was not hard enough to hope Inez would die, but could not help thinking that if she did one possible annoyance would be removed, and this thought was in her mind when Roy came suddenly upon her, overwhelming her with so many questions that for a few minutes she could only listen without replying. When at last she had a chance she repeated all that had happened since she came into the valley, dwelling most upon the loss of her diamonds for which Roy did not particularly care. He was more interested in Fanny. Once or twice during his rapid journey it had occurred to him that his newly found relatives might prove awkward appendages if Fanny insisted upon having them near her. But he put the feeling aside as unworthy of him.

“If she can stand it, I can,” he thought, and began to wonder what manner of people his father-in-law elect and sister-in-law might be.

Craig and Alice had both said that Mark was a gentleman and Roy accepted that so far as it went. He might have been a gentleman when they knew him, but he had passed through many phases since and there was no guessing what he was now, except that he was Fanny’s father, and as such must be respected. Mrs. Prescott did not help to reassure him and in all she said he detected a keen regret for what had happened, and that it was Inez who troubled her most. Mark would never intrude himself upon her, but Fanny would insist upon taking Inez to New York, if she lived, as she probably would.

“And if she does, oppose it with all your strength. We cannot have it. And bring Fanny away at once,” she said to Roy, when he left her for his drive to the cottage.

The sun was down when he reached it, but there was still light enough for him to see the gleam of a white dress upon the piazza. Something told him it was Fanny, and quickening his step he soon had her in his arms, smothering her with kisses, while she cried for joy. He did not at first notice how worn and pale she was, he was so glad to see her and so struck with her surroundings.

“By Jove, isn’t it queer to find you here? and how white you are,” he said at last. “This will never do. I must get you away at once.”

“Not while Inez lives,” Fanny answered, in a tone Roy knew it was useless to combat.

“Is she so very low?” he asked. “Tell me all about it. You have written a good deal, and your mother told me a lot, but I want to hear it from you. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”

Fanny told him everything from the day she first saw Inez up to the present time. When she described the hold-up she was very earnest and dramatic, and Roy’s blood tingled with admiration for the heroic girl who had braved a masked robber and was perhaps paying for it with her life. Two or three times he asked questions which Fanny thought irrelevant to the subject, but for the most part he listened quietly till she was through.

“You are glad you have found your father?” he said, during a pause in the conversation.

“Glad? Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?” Fanny replied. “I once told you I believed I should find him. He is not like you, nor Judge Prescott, nor anybody I ever knew, but he is mine, and you must like him.”

“I intend to,” Roy said, “and now fire away at Tom. What is he like?”

If there was sarcasm intended Fanny did not know it, and answered readily, “He is nice, too,—though not like father. I don’t quite know what I mean, only he is different. I am sorry for him. He was to marry Inez, you know, and now that can never be, and what I don’t understand is that he seldom comes into her room, and when he does she is sure to have a chill. She used to ask me often where he was and when I said, ‘Do you want to see him?’ she’d say, ‘No, I only want to know if he has gone out.’ I told him of it and he said, a little irritably, ‘Tell her I’m always in the house.’ That seemed to quiet her. Strange, isn’t it?”

Before Roy could answer, Fanny exclaimed, “There’s father,” and Mark Hilton appeared, looking surprised at the sight of a young man, with his arm around his daughter.

“Father, this is Roy,—come all the way from Boston,” Fanny said, and the two men were soon shaking hands and looking keenly at each other in the moonlight which fell upon them.

Roy saw a tall man, with a slight stoop, who must have been handsome once and was good looking still, with something in his language and manners indicative of education and a knowledge of good society. Mark saw a boyish young fellow, with innocence and purity written on his face, and thanked God that Fanny’s choice had fallen upon him. At first he was a little reserved, for he never grasped the hand of an honest man that he did not experience a twinge of shame, and this was very strong in the presence of Roy, who, as Craig Mason’s son, was allied with the past, and whose frank, honest eyes were studying him so closely.

If Mark felt any trepidation in meeting Roy, Tom felt it in a greater degree. He guessed who the young man was on the piazza with Mark, for he knew Fanny had written him to come, and for a minute he shook like a leaf. Then steadying himself with the thought that he had nothing to fear from Roy, he went forward to meet him as he came in, greeting him cordially and seeming wholly at his ease. When supper was over the three men began chatting together as familiarly as if they had known each other all their lives. Roy casually mentioned Ridgefield to Fanny, saying he had left his father and mother there, and both Mark and Tom began to ply him with questions concerning the town and Uncle Zacheus and Dotty.

“You know we lived there years ago and are interested in the place,” Mark said, and Roy told them all he knew, and then at the first opportunity plunged into the subject uppermost in his mind—the robbers and the hold up on the road.

This was something of which neither Mark nor Tom cared to talk. But they could not help themselves. No matter how adroitly they tried to turn it aside Roy brought it up again, with all the eagerness of youth, to whom such things are interesting.

“I wonder the robbers have never been caught,” he said. “We do things better in Boston. Why don’t you get a detective from the east? There’s Converse,—nearly equal to Sherlock Holmes. He only needs the slightest clew,—sometimes a word, a look,—to follow to the end. He’d unearth them quick. I believe I could run them down myself, give me time.”

“Why don’t you try and get the reward? It is a big one,” Fanny asked. “People think they live here.”

“Here!” Roy repeated, glancing around the room, as if in quest of a robber in some of the shadowy corners.

“Not in this house, you stupid,” Fanny said, laughingly, “but in the neighborhood,—among the mountains,—and that we possibly meet them every day. The very idea gives me the shivers, and I never see a strange man that I do not think, perhaps you are one of them. It would be dreadful if I had ever been near them, or spoken to them.”

“Is there nothing in their appearance to mark them?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “Nothing but their size. One is very tall; that is Long John. The other is short; they call him Little Dick. He attacked us. You know I told you that before.”

There was a lamp in the room and Tom and Mark were sitting where its light fell upon them. Roy had not noticed them particularly until Fanny spoke of the size of the robbers. Happening then to glance that way he was struck with the expression of Mark’s face and saw the look which passed between him and Tom.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath.

Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot and close.

“Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said.

Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid for a while of their inquisitive guest.

“How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to make himself so agreeable to Roy that he would forget the detective Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.”

Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight, Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”

“Tall as I am?” he asked, and Fanny replied, “Oh, no; he was about as tall as Tom, and slimmer. He wore a sweater which made him look small.”

“How did Tom look when he came up?” was Roy’s next question.

Fanny couldn’t enlighten him much there. She didn’t think of Tom, she was so absorbed with Inez. She knew he picked up her hat, which was frightfully jammed, and straightened it, and put it on her head. Then she spoke of her diamonds, wondering how they could have gotten loose and if she would ever find them.

“Tom is still hopeful that after a heavy rain they may come to light and has promised to look for them.”

“I hope he’ll find them,” Roy said, and continued: “By the way, what am I to call him and your father? Do the people know he isn’t Tom, and that your father is not Mr. Rayborne?”

“No,” Fanny said. “Inez wanted them to stay as they were, Mr. Rayborne and Mr. Hardy. They know father was divorced and that I am the daughter of his first marriage and took my step-father’s name at his request; that is all they know, and they wouldn’t care, if they knew the whole. I think divorces are wrong, but they are common, and a lot of people left their real names east when they came here.”

“Queer set Fanny has fallen among. I wonder what father would say,” Roy thought, as they walked back to the house, where only Tom was waiting to say good night.

Alone in his room Roy thought over all he had heard and seen and drew his own conclusions.

“I may be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am. Mr. Rayborne does not look like a highwayman. Fanny’s father, too. It can’t be, but I don’t quite like Tom’s face, it is too cunning and that look he gave Mr. Rayborne meant something. I wish Converse was here. No, I don’t. There’s Fanny! It would kill her, as it is killing Inez, if I am correct in my surmise. I’ll get her away from here as soon as I can, but while she stays I stay and watch! There will be a kind of excitement about it.”

For one so young Roy was a shrewd observer and was seldom wrong in his estimation of people. He was fond of detective stories, and often thought how he would act in such and such circumstances. A suspicion, of which he did not like to think, had fastened itself upon his mind, and in trying to combat it he at last fell asleep.

The next morning, when he met Mark and Tom by daylight, they both looked better to him and were so genial and gentlemanly and kind that he mentally asked pardon for having harbored an evil thought against them. Tom was particularly friendly and proposed a drive through the valley, as the day was fine. To this Roy acceded readily, saying he would be ready as soon as he had seen Inez. At the mention of her name Tom’s face grew so sad that Roy said to him, “Fanny has told me of your engagement to her and I sincerely hope Inez will live to keep it.”

“Never,” Tom answered, and turned away, while Roy followed Fanny up to Inez’s room.

Inez had passed a fairly good night, and was very anxious to see Roy. Fanny had brushed her hair and put on her one of her own pink and white dressing jackets, which brought out the beauty of her face, notwithstanding her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks.

“She looks like a picture,” Fanny thought, as she led Roy to the side of the bed.

No introduction was needed and none was given. Inez’s hand was lifted slowly to Roy, who took and held it in both his own. He knew the great black eyes, which looked blacker from contrast with the pallor of her face, were studying him closely, but he had nothing to conceal and met her scrutiny unflinchingly.

“Roy,” she said. “I am so glad for Fanny that you are her Roy, and glad you are here.”

He could not say he was altogether glad to be there except to be with Fanny, but he told her how sorry he was to find her so ill and that he hoped she would soon be better. He knew they were idle words, for death was written on every lineament of her face, but he must say something. Inez shook her head, but did not reply, and Roy, thinking to please and interest her, said, “I am going to drive with Mr. Hardy, who has kindly offered to show me the beauties of the valley.”

At the mention of Tom Inez closed her eyes as if to shut out a painful sight.

“Tired? Ar’n’t you?” Fanny said, motioning Roy to leave, which he did, willingly.

Sick rooms were not to his taste; he was happier with Tom, who proved a most agreeable companion, and talked so well and so intelligently on every subject and seemed imbued with so good principles that Roy mentally asked pardon again for having distrusted him. Of the hold-ups Tom did not like to talk, and said so.

“The last was fraught with so much disaster to Inez that I never think of it without a shudder,” he said, while of the first, in which he had been the hero, he made light, saying people had magnified what he did, and praised him too much. “I don’t believe it was courage. I was mad,” he said, “and flew at the man without thinking what the consequence might be to me. I hope we are done with the rascals and tourists can hereafter visit the valley in peace.”

Then he began to talk of the east and of Ridgefield and to relate anecdotes of his boyhood and his experience with Uncle Zach and Dotty. Mark, too, came in for a share in the conversation. And here Tom was very eloquent.

“Seeing him now, broken with hard work and crushed with anxiety for Inez, you can have no idea of the grand man he was when he lived in Ridgefield. Everybody respected him, and under right influences he would have staid what he was. No man will stand being nagged continually and twitted with his birth and poverty. I beg your pardon,” he added, as he saw Roy scowl, and remembered that he had been making insinuations against his mother-in-law elect; “I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Prescott. She was proud and beautiful, and greatly admired, and not always on the square. Her daughter is not at all like her.”

“I should think not,” Roy answered, dryly, and then Tom spoke of Roy’s mother and the good she had done him as a boy.

“If I had followed her advice I should have been a better man, but what is done is done and cannot be changed. Do you believe a bad man can become a thoroughly good one?”

The question startled Roy, who felt unequal to meet it, but who answered with a gravity beyond his years, “It depends upon what he has done. If reparation can be made he should make it, and—. Yes, it seems to me a bad man may become a good one. Of course the memory of the bad would always cling to him, making him sorry for the past and most sorry when the world was praising him.”

Roy had no idea how his words were stinging Tom, who answered quickly, “That’s just it. Memory! If we could kill that; but we can’t. Hell must be made up of memories.”

Again the suspicion of the previous night began to creep into Roy’s mind, but he cast it aside, while Tom roused himself from his melancholy mood and began to point out the lights and shadows on the mountains and asked if Roy would like to try a trail on the morrow. Nothing could suit Roy better, and for the next two or three days Tom went with him from mountain to mountain and was as gay as if no harrowing memory were intruding itself upon his mind. At last Roy suggested that they go to the scene of the last hold-up and look again for the missing diamonds. At first Tom hesitated. That spot was like a haunted spot to him, but there was no good reason for refusing, and they set off together for the scene of the attempted robbery. Once there Tom grew very communicative, rehearsing the proceedings even more dramatically than Fanny had done when describing them to Roy. Here was the stage. Here the robber stood waiting for it, and commanding the driver to halt and the passengers to hold up their hands. Here Inez sat and sprang over the wheel with a shriek which must have frightened the brigand quite as much as the revolver which proved not to be loaded, and here she lay fainting with her head in Fanny’s lap when all was over.

“Were you here through it all? I thought you came later,” Roy said, and Tom, who saw he had made a mistake, colored and stammered, “Sounds as if I was here, don’t it? You know, I happened along after the rascal had left, and a more frightened lot of people you never saw. I have heard Inez describe the scene so graphically that I feel as if I were a part of it.”

“I do believe you were,” Roy thought.

“Where was Fanny’s hat when you picked it up? We will look for the diamonds there, first,” he said.

Tom’s face was flushed, but his manner was composed and natural as he pointed out the spot where he had rescued the crushed hat from the mud. The grass was growing there now, and there was not a spot within a radius of many yards where the diamonds could have dropped and lain hidden.

“Some one of the crowd must have taken them,” Roy said, with conviction, when they ended their search and sat down upon a fallen tree to rest. “Yes, somebody took them here, and I will not leave California till I know who the thief is. I believe I’ll send for Converse. I suppose he could visit the valley like any ordinary person, and keep his eyes open. The diamonds were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day.”

“And when is that to be?” Tom asked.

Roy was not sure, but some time between Christmas and New Years.

“I hope she will have them by that time,” Tom said, throwing down the stick with which he had been poking in the grass and bushes, and going back to the buggy preparatory to returning home.

It was rather a silent drive, for they were both tired and a shadow had come over both, distrust on Roy’s side, and on Tom’s a dread of what the hot-headed young man might do. It was the second time he had mentioned Converse, the Boston detective, and Tom felt that his sin might be finding him out, and saw no escape from it except by suicide, of which he had thought more than once, but had always put the tempter behind him, with a vehemence which kept him at bay. His Ridgefield training had not wholly lost its effect, nor the advice Alice Tracy had given him when she gathered lilies with him on the river or tramped through the woods to visit the hornet’s nest and the turtle bed in the pond. Those days were very vivid to him now with Alice’s son beside him and a look like her in his face and blue eyes. He liked the boy, as he designated him, and was still a little afraid of him or what he might do. Roy, on his part, was thinking, “A first-rate fellow whom I can’t help liking, any more than I can help putting things together, but if he is bad so is Mr. Hilton, and on Fanny’s account I’d better keep quiet.”

In this state of mind they reached the cottage where they found Fanny waiting for them on the piazza, greatly excited and alarmed.

“Inez is much worse,” she said, “and wants to see Roy alone.”

CHAPTER XV.
AT THE LAST.

Inez had been better that morning and had asked to sit in her chair near the window where she could look out upon the mountains and the valley. Fanny was brushing her hair and talking to her, when she asked, as she often did, “Where is Tom?”

“Gone to drive with Roy,” Fanny said. “I believe they were going as far as the scene of the hold-up. Roy is anxious to see the place, and look for my diamonds. But it is of no use. If Tom can’t find them, he can’t.”

“The diamonds? What diamonds?” Inez asked quickly.

Fanny had been warned not to talk to Inez of the hold up. Consequently, with the exception of the day when the watch came, she had never mentioned it until now when she spoke of it in connection with her diamonds. It was of no use for her to try and waive the subject. Inez could not be put off, and she finally explained that when she reached Clark’s the diamonds were missing. The stitches in the ribbon bow of her hat had been broken and the linen bag had slipped out somewhere on the road.

“I have given them up,” she said, “and now only care to have the robbers caught. Roy talks of sending for a famous detective from Boston, but I hardly think he will. He is a rash boy any way and would like nothing better than such an adventure as we had.”

As she talked Fanny was admiring the gloss and texture of Inez’s hair, and wondering how it would look twisted on the top of her head after the fashion then beginning to prevail.

“I am going to do your hair in the latest style, if it will not tire you too much,” she said, going for some hair pins.

There was no answer and when she came back with the pins she saw that Inez’s head was turned to one side and lay motionless against the chair. She had not heard of the loss of the diamonds until now, when in an instant she saw the whole scene again, and knew where the diamonds were. The thought of the detective Roy was to send for added to her excitement. Tom was worse than she had supposed him to be, but she could not have him arrested. His downfall would implicate her father and Fanny would be involved in the disgrace. All this went rapidly through her mind until unconsciousness came and she knew no more until she was in bed, with her father and Fanny and the nurse bending over her with restoratives.

“Was she excited in any way?” Mr. Hilton asked, and Fanny replied, “I think not. I was brushing her hair and telling her that Roy had gone with Mr. Hardy to look for the diamonds. I had forgotten that she didn’t know they were lost. It might have been that, but I think it was the fatigue of sitting up too long.”

Mr. Hilton made no reply, but he knew what caused the faint which lasted so long and left Inez with no power to move except her head and one hand which from the wrist beat the air constantly. It was still moving feebly up and down, when Roy went to her and asked what he could do for her. Fanny had come up with him and with a motion of her head Inez dismissed her; then said in a whisper, with long, painful breaths between each word, “Don’t try to find the robbers, nor send for a detective. I shall be gone, but Fanny will be here. Don’t do it for her sake. My father is her father. She will have the diamonds back.”

Roy looked surprised. His talk of a detective had been mostly talk, and he told Inez so, assuring her that nothing should ever be done which could hurt Fanny, or compromise her father or Tom. She knew he understood her and that she was giving away those whom she loved better than her life, but she was giving them to Roy, who loved Fanny.

“Thanks,” she said faintly. “You will keep what I have said to yourself, and never let Fanny, nor any one, know. I can trust you?”

“To the death,” he answered, taking her shaking hand, which was as cold as if the shadow stealing into the room had touched that first and turned it into ice.

“I knew Tom was a rascal all the time, and Mr. Hilton, too, but my word is pledged and I shall keep it. Think of Fanny here in a den of robbers. It can’t be long, though. The poor girl is about done for,” Roy thought, as he tried to soothe and quiet Inez.

“Go now, and send Tom,” she said at last, and, glad to escape, Roy went quickly down the stairs and delivered the message to Tom.

It was the first time she had asked for him, and he felt much as a criminal feels when going to execution. He had no idea what she wanted and was rather relieved when she said to him, “Do you love me still?”

“More than I can tell you. Oh, Inez, I am so sorry for it all, and have nothing to offer in excuse,” he replied, bending over her until his face touched the hand which was still moving very slowly, and whose fingers stirred his hair as they moved.

“Don’t try to excuse, or explain,” she said. “Bury the past in my grave, and begin a new life. Make restitution as far as possible. Give Fanny her diamonds!”

Tom started violently. “How did you know she lost them?” he asked, and Inez replied, “I do know, and it has put out the little flickering flame there was left of my life. Get them to her somehow.”

“I have intended to do this all the time, and I assure you she shall have them,” Tom said.

“And the others,” she continued; “If you know who they are and where they are, send them what belongs to them, or its equivalent. You and father, both; I cannot talk to him. I leave it with you.”

She was asking impossibilities and Tom knew it, but he promised that so far as he could he would do all she wished.

“Tom,” she whispered, after a moment’s silence, “Come closer; it is hard for me to talk; the lump in my throat chokes me so.”

Tom bent closer to her, while she went on: “I have loved you so much and thought you so good and never suspected the truth. Tom, oh, Tom, kiss me for the sake of what we have been to each other, and when I am gone, be the good man I used to think you were. Stay with father and take care of him. He needs you. Good bye. Go now. I am so tired.”

In an agony of remorse Tom kissed the face where the moisture of death was gathering fast. Then he left her, and when he saw her again she was like a beautiful piece of marble, with a smile on her lips which told of perfect peace. Mark and Fanny watched by her until the great change came, and the hand which had beaten the air constantly was stilled forever, its last stroke falling on the head of her father who knelt beside her. In his heart was anguish such as few men have ever known. Not once had she reproached him. If she had he could have borne better than he could the look in her eyes and the way she shrank from him at times. Once when Fanny was absent from the room for a moment she said to him, “Poor father, I know you are sorry, and I have loved you through it all, but I can’t bear it. I must die. It is better so, for things could never be again as they have been. I couldn’t be happy here, nor anywhere. I want to go to mother and to God. Stay with Tom; he will be kind to you. Don’t go with Fanny, if she urges it,—with her and Roy, I mean. You could not go to her mother.”

She had done what she could for all of them, and felt that her work was finished. For an hour or more she lay with her eyes closed and with no perceptible motion in her body except the slow beating of her fingers, and when they stopped she was dead. When sure she was gone Mark broke down entirely, while Fanny and Tom tried in vain to quiet him.

“Let me alone,” he said. “I must have it out by myself. Nothing can help me but time.”

Leaving the house he spent hours among the hills, walking up and down while the rain, which had begun to fall, beat upon him unnoticed. He did not think of the storm, or the darkness, and stumbled over rocks and bushes until benumbed with cold and wet with the rain he returned to the house, an old man, so broken that he would never be himself again. He let Tom and Roy and Fanny make the arrangements for the funeral, while he sat in the room with Inez, sometimes talking to her, sometimes to himself, and sometimes to Anita, by whom Inez was buried on one of the loveliest mornings of the late summer. There were few visitors in the valley, but all the people in the sparsely settled neighborhood turned out to the funeral, as they had done to her mother’s. The house was filled with the flowers they brought, some from the woods and some from the gardens which were stripped to honor the dead. Early in the morning on the day of the funeral there came from Stockton a box of exquisite roses and a pillow of flowers, with Inez’s name in the centre. The moment she heard of Inez’s death Mrs. Prescott had telegraphed for the flowers, urging haste and fearing lest her gift should not be in time. As the funeral did not take place until the third day after Inez’s death, they were in time, and neither Fanny nor Mark would have had any doubt as to the sender, if her card, “Mrs. Helen Tracy Prescott,” had not accompanied them.

“Look, father,” Fanny said. “See what mother has sent.”

She put the roses upon the table and left the room for vases in which to arrange them. When she returned one was gone, but there were so many she did not miss it, or suspect that it was between the lids of the family Bible which Mark had not opened before since he recorded Anita’s death. Helen’s thoughtfulness had touched him closely and the rose he took was for her sake and the old time when he had nearly ruined himself with the roses bought for her in Ridgefield. When the short service was over Roy, who longed to get away, suggested to Fanny that they should leave that afternoon, as her mother was anxious for her return. There was no good reason for her staying longer, except to be with her father, who, putting his own grief aside, said to her, “Much as I want you to stay I think you should go to your mother. It was kind in her to let me have you so long. Tell her so, and thank her for the flowers she sent to Inez.”

Fanny would like to have asked him to come to New York, but she knew this could not be. Her father and mother had separated themselves from each other, and the gulf between them could never be recrossed. But she could have him in her own home, when she had one, and she urged his coming to Boston and felt piqued that Roy did not second her invitation. He was busy strapping his satchel and pretended not to hear. Mark understood perfectly, and while thanking Fanny for her kindness, knew he should never trouble Roy, and knew, too, when he said good bye to Fanny that in all human probability he should never see her again. For hours after Tom, who took Roy and Fanny to Clark’s, was gone, he lay on Inez’s bed, wishing he, too, were dead and lying by the new-made grave from which a faint odor of roses occasionally reached him. It was like a breath of Helen,—a perfume from the years of long ago, and he could have shrieked as he recalled those days, remembering what he was then and what he was now. It was dark when Tom returned, and not finding Mark in the house he went to the grave where he was standing with folded arms and his frame convulsed with sobs.

“Mark,” Tom said, stretching his hand across Inez’s grave, “Mark, it is we two alone forever.”

“Yes, we two alone forever,” Mark answered, grasping Tom’s hand, and holding fast to it as a drowning man holds to a spar. “Alone forever, with our secret to keep, and here by Anita’s grave and Inez’s, both of whom I killed, let us swear that henceforth we will be honest men and try in some small measure to redeem the past.”

“I swear it! I promised Inez that whatever restitution could be made we would make,” Tom said, and for a few moments the clasped hands were held above the grave, while the heads of the two men were bowed low as if each were ratifying the solemn vow.

CHAPTER XVI.
MARK AND TOM.

It was the morning of Fanny’s wedding day and the house in Madison Avenue was a scene of great excitement. Flowers and ferns and palms, and florists arranging them, were everywhere. Presents were constantly arriving until the room set apart for them could scarcely hold any more. Cards had been sent to Fanny’s father and Tom, who were in San Francisco, Mark at the Palace Hotel and Tom in a wholesale grocery. A pretty remembrance had come from each, with a letter from Mark wishing his daughter every possible happiness. So far as practicable Tom’s promise to Inez had been kept. Only a few of the people robbed were known to him or Mark by name. To these at intervals money had been sent, which produced nearly as great a sensation as the hold-ups had done. That the brigands had reformed or left the country was evident and Mark and Tom often heard the subject discussed, but Mark never joined in the discussion, or in any other. He was a silent, broken man, doing his work faithfully, but keeping apart by himself, with a sad, far-away look on his face, as if his thoughts were always with the two graves on the mountain side of the Yosemite.

Tom, whose temperament was different, was more social. It was seldom, however, that anything called a smile to his face, for he, too, was nearly always thinking—not so much of Inez’s grave as of the scene on the road and her face as it looked at him when bidding him go before she shot him, as she would shoot a dog. Just before Christmas he asked leave of his employer to go for a day to Salt Lake City. On his return he said to Mark, “It is all right. They are on the way.”

A few days later, and on the morning of the wedding day, Fanny and Roy were sitting together behind a forest of palms and azaleas, when the door bell rang for the twentieth time within an hour.

“Another present, I’ll bet you,” Roy said. “We shall have enough to set up a bazaar.”

“I hope it isn’t a clock. I have four already,” Fanny rejoined, going forward to take the carefully sealed package sent by express from Salt Lake City.

“Salt Lake City!” Fanny repeated, examining the package curiously. “Do we know anybody there? What do you suppose it is?”

Roy could not explain the presentiment he had as to what it was. He had expected something of the kind long before this, for he remembered that Inez had said, “Fanny will have her diamonds.”

“Open the package and see what it is,” he said.

The seals of wax were broken, the box opened, and Fanny gave a start of surprise as she saw the linen bag she had sewed with so much care into the ribbons on her hat.

“Mother! Look here! The diamonds!” she cried, laying them one by one on her mother’s lap.

They were all there and unharmed except as they were a little dim for want of cleaning.

“Who could have found them and sent them?” Fanny kept saying.

Roy felt sure he knew, but said nothing, while Mrs. Prescott suggested that the person who found them intended at first to keep them,—then, failing to dispose of them, decided to send them to New York.

“Yes, but how did he know where I lived, or that I was to be married to-day?” Fanny asked.

Roy tided over that difficulty by saying, “Easy enough, your mother advertised for them to be sent here if they were found, and the man or woman, whoever it is, happened to forward them in the nick of time. Providential dispensation, don’t you see?”

He was decking Fanny with the jewels as he talked, and she accepted his theory as she accepted everything from him.

“I shall write to father this very day that I have them. He will be so glad, and Tom, too. I dare say the poor fellow has hunted over every foot of ground between that place and Clark’s several times.”

Roy’s shoulders always gave a little shrug when Fanny talked in this strain, and he now left her while she wrote a few hurried lines to her father telling him her diamonds had come and asking if he had any idea who sent them.

“I am so happy,” she wrote, “for in a few hours I shall be Roy’s wife. I wish you could be here, and Inez. Oh, if she were only alive she would be my maid of honor and eclipse me with her beauty. Dear Inez. It makes me cry every time I think of her up among the mountains with the snow piled over her grave, and I so happy here with Roy. Think of me to-night and bless me, dear father. Mother is to give me away, but I shall fancy it is you. Good bye. Your loving daughter, Fanny Hilton, soon to be Fanny Mason.”

Mark read this letter to Tom, who said after a moment, “She is a splendid girl. I don’t think she takes after her mother.”

“Or her father, either,” Mark rejoined.

“Where does she get her lovely traits of character?” was Tom’s next remark, and for the first time since Inez died a smile broke over Mark’s face, as he replied, “It must be from ’Tina. From all descriptions I have had of that unfortunate lady Fanny looks like her.”

“I guess she does,” Tom said, then added, “I am glad the diamonds reached her safely. That chapter is closed and a great weight off my mind. I wonder if Inez knows?”

“Of course she does, and is glad as we are,” was Mark’s reply, and the diamonds were never mentioned again between them.

Mark was failing, and after he knew the diamonds were safe with Fanny, he began to go down rapidly.

“I feel as if I had been broken on the rack until every joint was loosened and every nerve crushed,” he said to Tom. “There is nothing to live for. Inez is dead; I shall never see Fanny again, and it is better so. But I do long for the hills and ponds of Ridgefield and Uncle Zach and Dotty. Do you think they’d be glad to see me? They don’t know what I am. Nobody knows but you and me.”

Tom wasn’t so sure about Roy. He believed that young man had his suspicions, and was equally sure he would keep them to himself.

“I know Uncle Zach and Dotty would be glad to see you, and in the spring we will go there,” he said to Mark, who, buoyed up with this hope, counted the weeks as they passed away, knowing the while that his strength was slipping from him and leaving him so weak that he staid all day in his room where Tom came every night to see him, and Mark, who had forgotten all the blame he had ever attributed to him, clung to him, as if he had been his son.

“I shan’t go to Ridgefield. I’ve given that up,” he said to Tom one day in March. “It’s the cottage now in the valley I want to see. How soon do you think we can go there?”

Tom didn’t know, and his face was very grave as he looked at his old comrade, who was so surely dying. Spring came early that year and as soon as it was at all practicable Tom took Mark by easy stages to the cottage. He had been there himself to see that it was made ready for the sick man and had passed a most uncomfortable time. He was neither a coward, nor superstitious, but during the three days and nights he spent alone in the cottage he suffered what he called the tortures of the damned. He heard or saw Inez everywhere. Saw her flitting in and out from room to room; heard her singing as she used to sing in her glad girlhood, and felt her kisses on his cheeks just as he felt them on the night of their betrothal. They were real kisses then which made his pulse beat with ecstasy; they were shadowy kisses now, which burned where they touched him, while his lips were purple with cold. Once he called to her, “Inez, Inez, do you know I am here?”

Then in his disordered imagination he fancied he heard again the shriek which had curdled his blood when she sprang over the wheel and confronted him.

“I am not afraid,” he said to himself, “but I wish Mark was here, or even Nero. I ought to have brought the dog, although he does not take to me as he used to do. I believe he knows something. Lucky he can’t talk.”

A week later Mark was there in the old familiar place, where everything spoke to him of Inez. He had no such fancies as Tom, and took Inez’s room for his own, sleeping in her bed, sitting in her chair by the window watching the light of the first summer days as it crept over the mountains, and knowing it was for the last time. Once he went to the closet where Inez’s dresses were hung, and taking them down looked at them with eyes, which could not shed a tear. On the one she wore on the day of the hold-up he gazed the longest. It was the last in which he had ever seen her and he recalled just how she looked in it when he helped her to a seat by the driver and remembered with a pang her soiled, crumpled condition when she came back with a look on her face he would never forget. There was a bit of dry mud still clinging to the skirt and he brushed it off carefully and shook from the dress every particle of soil and dirt and hung it away with the other gowns, leaving the closet door open so that from his bed where he lay a good part of the time he could see them and feel through them a nearness to Inez.

Everything he could do for him Tom did, and the two men lived alone through the months of May and June, when the tourist season commenced and the valley was again full of life and stir, and pilgrimages were made to Inez’s grave as to the grave of a saint. It was covered with flowers and some of these Mark pressed and sent to Fanny, who wrote to him every week and whose letters helped to prolong his life. But like Inez, he had lost his grip, and early in July he died quietly, like going to sleep, and there were three graves on the hill behind the cottage.

Tom was alone, with only Nero for company. Since the hold-up he had fancied that the dog avoided him. He had been much in Inez’s room during her illness and constantly with Mark until he died. He had stood by Inez’s grave when she was lowered into it and had lain by it for days after as if watching for her reappearance. And now he and Tom stood by Mark’s grave, the only mourners there, and Tom’s hand rested on Nero’s head as if asking for sympathy, which the sagacious animal gave. He seemed to know they were alone, and when the burial, which took place at sunset, was over and the people gone and Tom sat in the gathering twilight with his head upon a table and his hand hanging at his side, Nero crept to his feet, licking his hand and rubbing against him as he had not done in a year. Then Tom cried, as he said, “Bless you, Nero; if you have forgiven me I am not quite alone in the world. We will stick together, old fellow, but not here. You may like to sit by their graves, wondering why they don’t come back, but I can’t endure it. I am going away and you are going with me,—miles and miles away, old chap, where it will not be as lonesome as it is here, and where one at least will be glad to see me.”

A letter received by Mark from Fanny a few days before he died had decided Tom upon his future, and three weeks later, when a carriage full of tourists came from a hotel to see the grave of the girl who was always spoken of as “the heroine of the valley,” the cottage was closed and Tom was gone.

CHAPTER XVII.
IN RIDGEFIELD.

Fanny and Roy had been married amid flowers and music and crowds of people and the grand event chronicled in the Boston and New York papers. That the bride’s own father was living was not mentioned. The reporters had not gotten upon that item of gossip and Helen did not enlighten them. Fanny was the only daughter of Judge and Mrs. Prescott, and when she read one of the lengthy articles describing the wedding and her dress and her mother’s dress and dwelling at length upon the position and wealth of the Tracys and Prescotts and Masons she rebelled against it almost as hotly as years before Uncle Zach had rebelled against the advertisement her father had written of the Prospect House.

“I wish I had kept my own name, or taken it when I knew who I was. I am not Fanny Prescott,” she said, hotly, while Roy rejoined, “Of course not. You are Fanny Mason, my wife.”

They went to Florida where they spent the winter and Roy grew brown as a berry with being so much on the lakes and rivers and Fanny grew bilious eating too many oranges, and both were perfectly happy. Early in the spring they returned to Boston, where they staid with Roy’s father until June, when Fanny suggested that, instead of going to some fashionable watering place, they spend the summer in Ridgefield. Her father had sent her a deed of his Dalton property, and now that she owned it she began to have an affection for the old ruin and wanted to see it, she said to Roy, who answered, “All right. I’d rather go where I can have you to myself than to a hundred watering places where everybody will be admiring the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Roy Mason; that’s what the reporters would call you.”

“Horrid!” Fanny said. “I’m not beautiful, and I haven’t a single accomplishment. I am just Fanny,—your wife,” and she nestled close to him, with a look in her blue eyes which told Roy how much he was to her.

They stopped at the Prospect House more for the sake of its association with their parents than for the real comfort there was there now. The ruling spirit, Dotty, had been stricken with paralysis, and was more helpless than Uncle Zach, who, a martyr to rheumatism, sat in his wheel chair all day, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, with the help of two canes. He had received cards to their wedding, and had sent his regrets in a long letter in which he deplored the fact that he could not get some good out of his “swaller tail, which he wore to Craig’s weddin’ when he didn’t or’to wear it, and which was as good as new.” Mention, too, was made of Dot’s plum-colored satin, which was now too small for her, especially the sleeves. He was glad they remembered him. An invite was good to stay home on, and he was their respectful and venerable friend to command. Zacheus Taylor, Esquire, and poor Dotty’s X mark, “for she can’t use her hands to write more than that.”

Uncle Zach had grown childishly weak with his trouble and his years, and received Roy and Fanny with floods of tears, lamenting Dotty’s inability to serve them.

“I never expected to see you both agin, and when you was here together I told Dot so,” he said; “but here you be, and I’m mighty glad. I’m havin’ hard sleddin’. Old age ain’t a pleasant thing, with rheumatiz’ and paralysis, and maybe soffnin’ of the brain, and the tarvern all run down,—and Dotty played out.”

The best the house afforded was theirs, he said, and he insisted upon their taking the saloon, as he still called the parlor Mrs. Tracy had occupied.

“You’ll be better off there by yourselves,” he said. “The boarders ain’t what they used to be. The Tremont has got the big bugs.”

Poor Dotty couldn’t talk much or move, and Fanny spent hours with her, anticipating her wishes by her looks and greatly smoothing her path to the grave. Roy staid a good deal with Uncle Zach, who asked numberless questions about Mark and Jeff.

“I wish they was here. I want to see ’em, and so does Dot, though she can’t say so. Strange how I miss her talk and blowin’ me when I deserved it. I’m like a ship without a captain, but my laigs trouble me the most. Feel like sticks when I try to walk, and Sam Baily don’t push me even, at all,—jolts awfully over the stones. Yes, I wish they was here. Mabby they’d come, if they knew how used up Dotty and I be. Jeff could lift her and wheel me. Write and tell ’em I want ’em.”

Roy was not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he made no objection when Fanny wrote what Uncle Zach had said and added her own entreaties for her father to come.

“I don’t suppose you will care to see mother often,” she said, “but you can see me. I shall have a home of my own in Boston and we are going to build a cottage near the old ruin,—Roy and I,—and shall spend a part of each summer here.”

It was two weeks before an answer came, not in Mark’s handwriting, but in Tom’s.

“Oh, Roy. Father is dead. Read what Tom has written. I can’t,” Fanny said, as she glanced at the letter and then passed it to Roy, who read: “Stockton, June — 18— Mrs. Mason, Dear Madam:

“It is my painful duty to inform you that your father is dead. He has been failing ever since Inez died, but did not wish you to know it, as it might mar the pleasure of your wedding trip. He was always thinking of you and Inez. He was very ill when your last letter came, but it pleased him to know that you wanted him, and Mr. Taylor, too. If he had lived and been able, I think he would have gone to Ridgefield and taken care of the poor old couple. His death occurred three days after the receipt of your letter, which he kept under his pillow with Inez’s watch, which you are to have.

“I know he died a good man. I wish I were half as good. He talked a great deal of you, and once or twice spoke of your mother. He said, ‘Tell Helen I am sorry for any pain I caused her, and that I always think of her as she was that summer at the Prospect House.’

“We buried him by the side of Inez and Anita, and crowds attended his funeral. Now, I am alone, with only Nero left of all which once made my life so happy.”

Uncle Zach shed floods of tears when Fanny read this letter to him.

“Mark dead and lyin’ away off there among the mountains and the robbers,” he said. “They or’to have brought him here and buried him with his kin. I’d of given him a big monument. Yes, marm, I would. I liked Mark, if he did alter his name, and I feel as if I had lost a son, don’t you?”

He was looking at Roy, who did not feel as if bereft of a son, and not much as if he had lost a father, but he was very sorry for Fanny. Her grief was genuine. She had built many castles in the future when her father would come to her and these were all swept away.

“Do you think I should wear black?” she asked, “and that father ought to be brought east and buried here? Inez and Anita must come if he does.”

Roy shivered, as he thought of the three coffins landed at the station and himself superintending their interment in the angle of the wall near ’Tina.

“No, darling,” he said, kissing Fanny’s tear stained face. “I do not want you to wear black, nor is it necessary, and it is much better for your father and Inez to be among the hills of the Yosemite where they lived than to be brought here. Sometime we will go and see the graves and I will have a suitable monument erected to their memory.

“By their loving daughter and sister,” Fanny rejoined, drying the tears which were like April showers, she was so sunny and sweet.

Tom’s letter was sent to Helen, who was about starting for Narragansett Pier with a party of friends. Just how it affected her it was hard to tell. She gave up the trip to Narragansett, saying she was not feeling well and preferred to remain at home. If she cried, no one saw her. If she were sorry, no one knew it. She was too proud to show her real feelings, or talk of a past which was buried, but her eyes were very heavy and her face very pale as she sat behind the closed blinds of her house, at home to no one, and supposed by most of her friends to be out of town, as she usually was at that season. Fanny urged her coming to Ridgefield, and she replied, “Not yet. It would bring back a past I wish to forget. Your father is dead, and I have no hard feeling towards him. We were both in fault. I was self willed, and thought because I had money I must not be crossed. He was a man who could not yield quietly to be governed in every particular by a woman. But let that pass. I am glad you knew him and glad you revere his memory.”

This was quite a concession for Helen, and showed that much of her proud spirit was broken. When she heard how fast Mrs. Taylor was failing as the summer wore on she sent her little notes of remembrance, with boxes of flowers and delicacies of various kinds. These pleased Uncle Zach, but it was difficult to know whether his wife realized the attention. She always seemed glad when Fanny was with her, but nothing brought so happy a look to her face as the appearance of Uncle Zach in his wheel chair, and her eyes rested constantly upon him when he was with her, but she couldn’t speak to him or return the pressure of his hand when he laid it on hers.

“She can’t do nothin’ she wants to,” Uncle Zach said pathetically. “I’d like to kiss her, but I can’t stand alone and should tumble on to her, if I tried.”

“I’ll help you,” Fanny said, and passing her arms around him she held him, while he bent down and kissed the old wife whose quivering lips returned the kiss and tried so hard to speak.

That night she died, and no young husband ever made a bitterer moan for his bride of a few months than did Zacheus over his Dotty. “The greatest woman in the world for runnin’ a tarvern and keepin’ a feller straight,” he said amidst his tears, which fell continually, sleeping or waking. He did not think of her as old and wrinkled and grey haired, but as she had been in their early married life, when she was slight and fair, with long curls in her neck and around her face. “The prettiest girl in town as she is now the most remarkable woman. I shall get along somehow, I s’pose,” he said to Fanny, “but it is very dark with Dotty gone, and Mark, too, and Jeff, and Johnny in the cemetry goin’ on sixty year. If he had lived he might have had boys to stay with me. As ’tis, I am all alone. It isn’t pleasant to be old and helpless and all alone and cold as I am most of the time with this pesky rheumatis’.”

To this Fanny could offer no consolation. She couldn’t stay with him always, nor could she take him with her when she left Ridgefield. He was indeed alone in his old age, dependent upon hired help, who might not always be kind to him. And this he seemed to feel nearly as much as Dotty’s death.

CHAPTER XVIII.
DOTTY’S FUNERAL.

“Alone and cold, with no one to care for me,” was Uncle Zach’s constant lament, as he sat shivering by Dotty’s coffin during the days which preceded her funeral.

Craig and Alice were both with him and this was some comfort, while the flowers sent in great profusion made him feel, he said, as if he was somebody, and he wished Dotty knew. Greatly to Fanny’s surprise and delight her mother came in the morning train, and the honor of having her there with Craig and Alice partly compensated Mr. Taylor for his loss. It was the first time Helen had been in Ridgefield since she left it twenty-four years ago, and naturally her presence aroused much interest and curiosity in those who remembered her. When she heard of Mrs. Taylor’s death a sudden impulse seized her to go to the funeral. Almost anything was better than staying at home alone as she was doing. If Roy built that cottage she must of course go there some time, and she might as well make this her opportunity. So she went and in her crape, still worn for Judge Prescott, she looked grand and handsome and dignified, and cried a little over Dotty and more over Uncle Zach in his wheel chair. He persisted in calling her Miss Hilton and talking to her of Mark, until Alice suggested to him that it might be better to give her her real name and to say nothing of Mark, as it could only bring up unpleasant memories.

“Jess so,—jess so. Yes, marm. You are right, and it shows how I am missin’ Dotty to tell me what is what,” Uncle Zach replied.

After that he laid great stress on Miss Prescott when he spoke to her, as she was brushing his hair and arranging his necktie for the funeral. She had asked to do this for him and as he felt her fingers on his forehead and about his neck, he burst out suddenly, “It brings it all back, when you was a young gal makin’ the house so bright. You ain’t a widder, nor Miss Prescott to me, and I won’t call you so.”

“Call me Helen, please. I feel more like her here than I have in years,” she replied.

She was very kind to him and arranged that he should go to the grave in the carriage with Roy and Fanny and herself. “The very best and easiest there is in town,” she said to the undertaker.

“But, but,” Uncle Zach interposed, “I could no more git into a kerridge than I could fly. I must be wheeled. Dot won’t mind. She knows how stiff I am.”

It was in vain that they urged upon him that he could be lifted into a carriage. He insisted that he couldn’t.

“If I go at all, it must be in my chair, with Sam to push me,” he said, and that settled it, and his chair was wheeled into its place in the long procession which followed Dotty to the grave.

It took some time to get all the carriages into line and ready, and while they were waiting a stranger came rapidly across the street and joined the crowd in front of the Prospect House. He was dusty and travel stained and no one recognized him but Roy and Fanny, who, with Helen, were in the carriage next to Uncle Zach’s chair.

“Oh, Roy,—there’s Tom!” Fanny cried, as he passed them without looking up, so intent was he upon the forlorn old man sitting alone with his attendant behind him.

“If you please, this is my place,” he said in a low tone to Sam, waving him aside so peremptorily that Sam had nothing to do but submit, which he did willingly, wondering who the stranger was and why he was so anxious for a job he did not fancy.

Uncle Zach was rather hard of hearing, and in the confusion of starting did not hear Sam’s instructions, “Go easy over the stones; he’s awful lame.”

Tom nodded that he understood, and the funeral cortege started.

“Careful, now, Sam. There’s a rut full of stones!” Uncle Zach said once, surprised at the deftness and ease with which the supposed Sam avoided the stones, almost lifting the chair over the worst of them, and showing a thoughtfulness he had never shown before. “It’s because it’s Dotty’s funeral, he’s so keerful,” Uncle Zach thought, resolving to give him something extra when he paid him his next month’s wages. “Get me as close to the grave as you can. I want to see her up to the last minute,” he said, when they were in the cemetery.

Without a word Jeff wheeled the chair as near the grave as possible, every one making way for him and all wondering who he could be, except Roy and Fanny. Once during the committal he looked at them and in response to their greeting touched his hand to his uncovered head with a motion so natural that Alice, who was watching him, started with a conviction that she had seen him before, and when the next moment their eyes met and he smiled upon her she was sure that it was the boy Jeff. She could not speak to him then and when the ceremony was over and the people began to disperse there was a new diversion in the scene in the shape of a huge dog who came bounding over the grass and leaping upon Jeff nearly knocked him down. It was Nero escaped from the freight house at the station where his master had left him for a time in charge of a boy. Jeff’s longing to see Ridgefield had grown in intensity until at last without any warning of his coming, he started east with his dog and travelled night and day until Ridgefield was reached. Hearing in the car of the funeral and fearing Nero might be in the way he had him shut up and went rapidly up the street he remembered so well to the Prospect House, reaching it in time to take Sam’s place and wheel Uncle Zacheus to the cemetery. After many fruitless efforts to escape by the door Nero squeezed through a half open window and following his master’s trail came upon him in the graveyard and in his joy at finding him caused a lurch to the chair which elicited a groan from Uncle Zach.

“Oh, Sam, are you in a hole, or what? You’ve nearly broke my back,” he said; “and whose great dog is that cantering ’round as if he was goin’ to jump on me. Go ’way, doggie, doggie; go ’way. Shoo! Shoo! Take him off!” he continued, as Nero showed signs of making his acquaintance, or at least finding out what manner of being it was wrapped in a shawl and looking so small and helpless.

Jeff did not reply till he got the chair away from the grave to a side path where they were comparatively alone.

“Where be you takin’ me? I or’to go back with the procession. Folks’ll think it queer,” Uncle Zach said, as he found himself at some distance from the main road of the cemetery.

Stepping in front of him Jeff took off his hat and said, “Don’t you know me?”

Uncle Zach’s sight was dim and his eyes weak with the tears he had shed, but something in Jeff’s voice and manner seemed natural. He, however, had no suspicion of the truth, and replied, “I or’to know you, of course, but I’m kind of blind, and my spe’tacles is at home. Who be you, and where is Sam?”

“If I were to turn a somerset or two, and stand on my head, do you think you would know me then?” Jeff asked, with his old merry laugh.

The effect was wonderful. Uncle Zach had not risen alone from his chair in months, but he sprang up now and stood firm upon his feet, with his arms outstretched.

“Jeff! Jeff! my boy!” he cried, “It’s you, yourself, come back to me! Thank God!”

He could say no more, and sank back in his chair, shaking like a leaf, while Jeff said to him, “Yes, it’s Jeff, come back, and sorry to find Mrs. Taylor dead, and you so helpless. Shall I take you home?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m all of a tremble, and so glad you’ve come, and so would Dotty be, if she knew,” Uncle Zach replied; “and this is your critter?” motioning towards Nero, who, with sundry sharp woofs, was signifying his approval of affairs.

“Yes, this is Nero. He belonged to Mark, and I could not leave him in the mountains alone. He is a friendly, faithful fellow, and will guard you, or your property, with his life,” Jeff said, caressing the dog, in whose eyes there was a human look as if he understood what was being said.

As a rule Mr. Taylor did not care much for dogs. Dotty had disliked them, and would never have one on the premises. They tracked her clean piazza and floor and trampled down her flower beds, she said. But Dotty was gone. Nero had belonged to Mark, and when he put his nose on Zacheus’s knee and looked up in his face, the old man’s heart was won and Nero adopted with Jeff.

“Doggie, doggie, Mark’s doggie, you are welcome,” he said, patting Nero whose bushy tail was in full swing and who, with the sagacity of his race, had seen that Uncle Zach needed care and had constituted himself his body guard.

Meanwhile Craig and Alice, and Helen and Roy and Fanny had been watching the scene at a distance. They were yet to be met and it was hard meeting them all. Jeff had seen Helen at Clark’s when he took Fanny and Roy there after Inez’s funeral. She had been rather reserved towards him then and said very little, but now her manner changed, and she was the first to go forward and meet him as he came near to them. Inez was dead and he could never claim any connection with Fanny. He would stay with Uncle Zach as his proper place, and she was very cordial in her greeting. Alice and Craig came next, the former doing most of the talking and both seeming so pleased to see him that he felt his spirits rising and had not been as happy in years as he was when at last he stood again in the house where he had spent his boyhood.

Roy was cordial, but could not forget Inez’s dying words, which had betrayed so much, and every time he looked at Jeff he recalled the scene of the hold up which he had heard described so vividly that he sometimes felt that he had been an actor in it. Fanny was unfeignedly glad to see Jeff and kept him by her a long time while she questioned him of her father’s sickness and death and burial. Helen, who sat near, made no comments, but she did not lose a word, and occasionally, when Fanny cried the hardest, her bit of linen and lace which passed for a handkerchief, went up to her eyes and came away with several wet spots upon it. With his friends around him, treating him as if he had always been an honest man, Jeff began to feel like one. He was glad Alice did not refer to the pickpocket business, for he could not tell her that he had kept his promise to the letter. He had followed no one on the street, or in a crowd, but he could recall pockets in which his hands had been while the owners were pale as death and almost as still. That was buried in the Yosemite and here in Ridgefield, where every one was pleased to see him, the dreadful past was slipping away from him, and with a rebound his old life was returning. Nero, too, came in for a share of notice and petting. Craig, who was fond of dogs, offered to buy him, but Jeff said, “No, he is the only relative I have left in the world. I have brought him from beyond the Rockies and if Mr. Taylor does not object, I shall keep him.”

“Object to the critter! Of course not. He was Mark’s, and Dotty isn’t here to care about his feet. They are pretty big. Shoo, shoo, doggie; not quite so friendly,” Uncle Zach replied, shaking his fingers at the dog, who had taken a great fancy to him and persisted in laying his head in his lap and occasionally putting his paws on the wheel of his chair.

The next day Craig and Alice and Helen went home, but Roy and Fanny staid on to see to the new cottage. The ground for it had been broken a little distance from the old ruin, “but not so far away that ’Tina can’t come across the grass to visit us if she wants to,” Roy said to Fanny, who had no fear of ’Tina so long as Roy was with her. They staid in Ridgefield the rest of the summer with an occasional trip to New York, where Helen kept herself secluded until it was time for the fashionable world to come home and open their doors. Then she gradually made her way again into the society which she enjoyed. Sometime in September Roy and Fanny returned to Boston, leaving the cottage so nearly completed that it would be ready for them in June of the next summer, if they wished to occupy it so early.

CHAPTER XIX.
ODDS AND ENDS.

Six years later and it is summer again in Ridgefield. Uncle Zach has celebrated his ninetieth birthday, and except for his lameness is nearly as hale and hearty as he was when he first welcomed the Masons and the Tracys to his home. Jeff’s presence has worked wonders in him and in the house as well. In a quiet way he assumed the role of master while nominally acting under Mr. Taylor’s orders. The servants, who had become lax and worthless, have been dismissed, and others more competent hired in their place. The house has been thoroughly renovated and refurnished. Many of the former boarders, who had gone to the Tremont, have come back, and a few people from Boston spend the summers there.

“If Dot was only here, and I had my laigs it would seem like old times,” Uncle Zach often says to Jeff, who is his right hand and left hand and feet and brains.

If kindness to an old man can atone for the past Jeff is atoning for it. He puts his master to bed at night as if he were a child and dresses him in the morning. Every pleasant day he takes him for what he calls a drive through the town, stopping wherever the querulous old man wishes to stop and wheeling him so carefully that his rheumatic limbs seldom receive a jolt. Nero is always in attendance and is as much a part of the turnout as Jeff himself. Uncle Zach no longer shoos him when he puts his head on his knees, but he sometimes has pricks of conscience as to what Dotty would say if she could see the big dog stretched on the floor of the piazza or wherever he chose to lie. Dotty’s habits are deferred to by both Uncle Zach and Jeff, except the quarterly house cleanings. At these Jeff has drawn the line. Twice a year was sufficient, he said, for any house, and Uncle Zach agreed with him. Every three months, however, a dress coat and vest and little yellow blanket are brought out to air, the blanket so tender with age that Jeff scarcely dares touch it. “Johnny’s blanket,” Uncle Zach always says, with a tone very different from that in which he speaks of his swallow tail.

“Fool and his money soon parted,” he said when telling Jeff what it had cost. “I never wore it but once and never shall again. The missionaries don’t want it, nor the heathen. If you had any use for it I’d give it to you. It seems a pity for it to lay there year in and year out smellin’ like fury with that moth stuff you put in it.”

Jeff laughed and thanked him as he folded up the garments and laid them away with Taylor’s Tavern in the hair trunk. Once he brought the sign down for Uncle Zach to see.

“I can’t git up them stairs and I’d like to look at it agin,” he said, and when Jeff brought it and stood it before him tears ran down his cheeks like rain. “It makes me think of the time when I was young, and Dotty, too. The lalocks in the garden was blowin’ and the apple trees was blossomin’ the day it was sot up. I can smell the lalocks yet, though the bush has been dead many a year just as Dotty is. Take it away, Jeff, and you needn’t bring it agin. I’m done with Taylor’s Tarvern, and with everything else but you!”

Jeff took it back and felt the moisture in his own eyes at his master’s reminiscences of a past which could never return. To the villagers Jeff was very reticent with regard to his western life. Of his change of name he made light. It was a fashion with some of the miners and he foolishly followed it, he said, but of what befel Tom Hardy he said very little. He was, however, paying so heavy a penalty for his misdeeds that he sometimes felt as if he must hide where no one had ever heard of him in connection with Long John and Little Dick. Fanny had told of the hold up of which he had been the hero, and of the other where he had been an actor, and it seemed to him people would never stop questioning him as to the most minute details. If he repeated the story once in the office he repeated it a hundred times to a breathless audience which never grew tired of listening and were always ready to hear it again.

“And they never got a clew to them, you say?”

“Never,” was the question and answer, with which the evening usually closed, the people dispersing to their rooms or homes, while Jeff rushed out into the night overwhelmed with remorse.

“I believe State’s Prison would be better than this,” he sometimes thought when Uncle Zacheus had him on the rack.

He was inexorable and made Jeff tell the story over and over again until he ought to have known it by heart. Once when he was out for his airing he asked, speaking of the robbers, “Be they gone, root and branch?”

“Yes, root and branch. Neither Long John nor Little Dick have been seen since Inez died,” Jeff replied.

It was not often that he spoke of Inez, and now at the mention of her name Uncle Zach rejoined, “Poor girl, and you was to have married her. I am sorry for you. And she was Miss Mason’s sister and Mark was her father. Mark was a likely chap. I’ve nothing agin him except that he run away and let ’em think he was dead and changed his name. I s’pose he put you up to change yours, too.”

“No, he didn’t,” Jeff answered quickly. “It was right the other way. I put him up to every bad thing he ever did.”

Jeff was a little heated in his defense of Mark and pushed the chair over a rough place with less care than usual.

“Soffly, soffly, Jeff. My bones is older than they was once,” Uncle Zach said.

This recalled Jeff to himself, and the rest of the journey was made with comparative comfort to the old man’s bones. They were on their way to the Queen Anne cottage which had been built near the site of the old ruin and between it and the road. It was a very pretty and artistic affair, with bay windows and projections and wide halls and piazza, where Roy said ’Tina could sit and rest if she wanted to, when she made her nocturnal visits. The cellar was filled up and made into a terrace, or plateau, which was ablaze with flowers from June to September. A part of the orchard had been cut down and with the lane converted into a small park of green sward, flowering shrubs and shade trees. Here Roy and Fanny spent a part of every summer and were often joined by Craig and Alice, and occasionally by Helen, whose beauty was not greatly marred by the lapse of years and who was sometimes told that she looked nearly as young as her daughter. She was a grandmother now and two children played on the grass and picked flowers from the spot where ’Tina once had lived and loved and sinned. They were a sturdy boy of five years old and a little girl of three. The only real disagreement Fanny and Roy ever had was on the subject of the boy’s name. Fanny wished to call him Mark Hilton, while Helen favored the idea. Roy could not tell Fanny that his son must not be named for one who he believed had been a highwayman, but he objected to the name and held his ground against Fanny’s entreaties and the advice of Craig and Alice.

“Perhaps as you won’t call him for my father you’d like to call him for yours,” Fanny said, with as much spirit as she ever opposed to Roy.

“No,” he answered, “not for my father either, but I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll call him for your adopted father, Walter Prescott. How will that suit you?”

“Not as well as Mark Hilton,” Fanny replied, but she gave up the point and the boy was christened Walter Prescott.

When two years later a girl was born there was no question as to her name from the moment Roy said to Fanny, “Would you like to see our little daughter Inez?”

They were bright, active children and Jeff was their slave. They were never happier than when with him, and always hailed with delight the sight of the wheel chair coming down the road, for that meant a ride after Uncle Zach was safely deposited upon the piazza with their father and mother.

On the morning when Jeff came near upsetting the chair in his defense of Mark they were on the lookout for him. They had come from Boston the night before and were watching eagerly for their horse, as they called him, while Nero was a colt. Craig and Alice were there and with Roy and Fanny were enjoying the freshness and fragrance of the June morning.

“There they come; there’s Jeff and Nero,” Walter cried, running to meet him, and “Dere’s Deff and Nero,” Inez repeated, toddling after her brother.

Both Fanny and Roy hurried to meet Uncle Zach, who was soon helped to a seat on the piazza, and his chair was at liberty and at once appropriated by the children.

“Where shall we go?” Jeff asked, and Walter answered, “To the woods.”

He always wanted to go there, hoping to find a bumble-bee’s nest, if not the hornet’s his grandmother had told him about. Inez was satisfied to go anywhere with Jeff, whose face always brightened at sight of her and then grew sad as he remembered another Inez in her mountain grave. They found the spot where a hornet’s nest had been, and saw a rabbit steal cautiously out from her hole and then in again as Nero started for her. They picked some wild flowers and ferns and then Inez grew tired of walking about and wanted Jeff to sit down and take her. When, as a baby of a year old, Inez had first held up her arms to him, he had shrunk from her with a feeling that he was unworthy to touch her. Roy, who was present, had something of the same feeling, for he never saw Jeff without a thought of the hold up. But the child’s persistence had conquered his prejudice and subjugated Jeff, who loved the little girl better than any living being. Indeed, there was no one else for him to love. He respected Uncle Zacheus and admired Fanny and reverenced Alice as one of the noblest of women, but his affection was given to the baby Inez.

“Taky me; I’se tired,” she kept saying in the woods until he sat down upon a log and took her in his lap.

“Now, tell us a story about Aunt Inez and the robbers,” Walter said, coming up with the dog, who stretched himself at Jeff’s feet while Walter lay down at his side.

The previous summer Jeff had told Walter of his home among the mountains and his life there with the other Inez, and his grandfather and Nero, and once Walter had heard his mother tell some one of the hold up and the robber, and boy-like this pleased him more than the cottage and the mountains. He had made Jeff tell him about it two or three times the year before and now insisted that he should tell it again, and begin where his Aunt Inez jumped over the wheel and Nero ran after the robber. Very unwillingly Jeff told the story, adapting it to Walter, who listened intently and did not allow him to omit any part of it which he knew.

“I wish I’d been there with mamma. Where was I?” he asked.

Jeff did not know, and with his respect for Jeff’s knowledge considerably lessened, he continued, “I’d have shot the robber.”

Inez, whose arms were about Jeff’s neck and who generally said what Walter did, replied, “I’d sot the yobber,” and her arms tightened their hold, giving Jeff a feeling of suffocation and helping to smother the groan he could not entirely repress.

“Now, tell about Aunt Inez and where she lived,” Walter said, and Jeff told him of the grand mountains and the waterfalls in the beautiful valley far away and the grave among the hills where his Aunt Inez was buried.

“Was she as pretty as mamma?” Walter asked, and Jeff replied, “I think she was prettier.”

“I don’t believe it. Do you, Nero?” Walter said, with a kick of his foot against the side of the dog, who answered by springing up and hurrying after the rabbit which had ventured from its hole a second time.

Walter followed the dog, and Jeff was left alone with Inez, who whispered drowsily, “Tell more of the bufiful valley far away.”

Then she fell asleep, and bending over her Jeff whispered, “Oh, God, in this world my sin will always follow and torture me, but grant that in the next I may be pure and innocent as this child.”

Something roused the little girl and opening her eyes, so like the eyes Jeff remembered so well, she lisped, “Ess, he will.”

Then she fell asleep again, and with a feeling that he had received a benediction, Jeff, who had never kissed her before, kissed her now for the sake of the dead Inez, whose grave was in the beautiful valley far away.

THE END.

---

POPULAR NOVELS

BY

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

Tempest and Sunshine.

English Orphans.

Homestead on Hillside.

’Lena Rivers.

Meadow Brook.

Dora Deane.

Cousin Maude.

Marian Grey.

Edith Lyle.

Daisy Thornton.

Chateau d’Or.

Queenie Hetherton.

Bessie’s Fortune.

Marguerite.

Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.

Darkness and Daylight.

Hugh Worthington.

Cameron Pride.

Rose Mather.

Ethelyn’s Mistake.

Milbank.

Edna Browning.

West Lawn.

Mildred.

Forrest House.

Madeline.

Christmas Stories.

Gretchen.

Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.

Paul Ralston.

The Tracy Diamonds. (New.)

“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”

Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sent free by mail on receipt of price,

G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers

NEW YORK.

---

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Moved ad to the [end].
2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.