“It couldn't. So, if it's all the same to you, Miss Budd, I'd rather ye wouldn't.”
“That,” said the lady still more archly, lifting a playful finger, “is your temper.”
“Mebbe it is,” said Abner suddenly, with a wondering sense of relief.
It was, however, settled that Miss Budd should go to Sacramento to visit her friends, that Abner would join her later, when their engagement would be announced, and that she should not return to the hotel until they were married. The compact was sealed by the interchange of a friendly kiss from Miss Budd with a patient, tolerating one from Abner, and then it suddenly occurred to them both that they might as well return to their duties in the hotel, which they did. Miss Budd's entire outing that Sunday lasted only half an hour.
A week elapsed. Miss Budd was in Sacramento, and the landlord of the Big Flume Hotel was standing at his usual post in the doorway during dinner, when a waiter handed him a note. It contained a single line scrawled in pencil:—
“Come out and see me behind the house as before. I dussent come in on account of her. C. BYERS.”
“On account of 'her'!” Abner cast a hurried glance around the tables. Certainly Mrs. Byers was not there! He walked in the hall and the veranda—she was not there. He hastened to the rendezvous evidently meant by the writer, the wilderness behind the house. Sure enough, Byers, drunk and maudlin, supporting himself by the tree root, staggered forward, clasped him in his arms, and murmured hoarsely,—
“She's gone!”
“Gone?” echoed Abner, with a whitening face. “Mrs. Byers? Where?”
“Run away! Never come back no more! Gone!”