The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 4, 1906, Page 2

Q »p steps, but he would leave in a day or two at the longest. “The girls like seeing you so much,” now she looked at him with some ani- mation. “And they have so little pleas- ure’™ “SWhy -mother,” sai; half-laughing ¢ Rosamund in sounds as f Colonel Parr of gircus, just here to am ’ The colonel wa at the bot- tom of the steps. With last- con- ventional ntence o he raised his hat and turned toward mother and daughter for a final glance They were smills at Rosamund's w s, both it him to return his bow with politeness. When he turned 1d hear their voices, low nd different form of f the adjustment of window = by tory hem he ¢ and full of interest. spe the invalid's awls, the which ‘her ¢ hould be placed. He was ha down the path to of suppressed Turning in its the gate sound singing caught direction he saw coming down through a narrow path in the chaparral a fine red and white cow, and, following it, June Allen. She was singing in a crooning, absent-minded way, at intervals flicking the flanks of the cow with a long alder branch she carried, stripped of all its leaves save two at the top. As she ap- proached him she stopped singing, struck the cow. with the branch, and begun in a thoughtful way to talk to herself. The attraction she had exercised over him fel him again the moment he saw her. The very way she appeared to be convérsing to herseif seemed to him to be imbued with a quaint, unconscious rm, such as a child possesses. With i full of the gloom and pain of his interview with Alice, he vet, paused, eying e approaching figure. As he stood watching h she looked' up and saw him. . She gave .a loud exclamatipn and her lumined with pleasure. Ad- the cow a smart stroke switch she crowded by it and ran forward over the dry grass into which the verdure of the garden intruded, “Oh, how lovely for me to meet you!” she cried as she came up to him with an tended hand. *“I never thought .d have such luck.” Her hand nestled into his; her face smiling him was charged with an al- sst fond -delight. “I'm afraid you're a fatterer, young woman,” he said, again noting the aston- ishing likeness t had so shaken him the evening before. “I don’t tnink you're really glad to see » or why should you, when you knew I was coming, g0 off with ine cow’ “That w she said, “I wanted to stay and see you jus as Rosamund gid. But as I the party iast night we it was omly fair I should g er Bloss this evening, and Rosamund should stay and take care of mother and see you. If any commentary was needed on the deadly monton of their existence, the n it was now given. That g and attractive girls should regard him as a matter of such deep in- terest was proof to him of the unrelieved dreariness of their lives “So you went for Bloss g at the cow which t and was —oving lurching ing toward a background. Yes, we go for her alternate nights, She wanders all over thestract*by day. and in tne evening we've Sometimes a h before we can get her.” hey. were both looking at Bloss, who suddenly stopped, stepped heavily he said, look- now passed forward with a shed in the on the garden border, and began to bite & hol a row of neat, green leaves. “Bloss!” his = companiod almost eked, “you ' impudent,® desperate cow! Did you ever see. sfich an im- pertinent thing? X > And she ran toward Bloss, who, feeling ‘the switch suddenly on her flanks, gave up the happy dream of an €vening feast of young lettuce and di- rected her course once more toward the shed. June followed her, calling imploringly over her shoulder. “Please don't go yet, oh, please don’t! 1 do want to see you for a moment, but I've got to put this mis- erdble animal in her stable, or she’ll spoil the garden. Please wait.” To which he called back: “All right. Don't hurry. down to the gate.” And he moved slowly down the path between the pinioned rose-bushes, looking through the barring of the old gate at the dusty road. He had not to wait long. He was standing there gazing down the road when he heard her light step and hurried breathing as she ran toward him “It was too bad,” she said as she came to a panting stand beside him, her alder switch still in her hand, “but 1. couldn’t let her eat those let- tuces. We've had a lot of trouble with them and when they're good Wwe can sell them as far as Sonora.” She said this with an air of pride, es one who vaunts an admired accom- plishment. “Do you like gardening?” he asked, end then stopped. From the house came a sudden sound of coughing, a heavy, racking paroxysm. The girl's eves slanted sidewise as she stood mo- tionless, listening. She remained thus, in .a trance-like quietude of attention till the sound grew fitful and then ceased. “How did mother strike you?” she asked in a low voice. “I—she—" he blundered, and then sald desperately: “Well, she’s changeéd, of course, but after a long period of {liness—" He stopped. Unfinished sentences save more occasions than the world wots of. “Yes, of course,” she said eagerly, seizing on even such feeble encour- agement. “And she's been sick for such a dreadfully long time, ever since Virginia, more than four years now. Bhe's thin, though, isn’t she?” She looked anxiously at him. “Long illnesses dre apt to make peo- ple thin,” he said, turning away his head. # “Yes, I suppose so, especially—" She too left her sentence unfinished. For a moment she stood looking down, flicking at an sdjacent rose-tree with her switch. “Tell me about the gardening,” he said, seizing on the subject as the one uppermost in his mind. “How do you I'll stroll get your thinged as far afield as So- nora?” “I'll tell you about that later”; she suddenly seemed to shake off her anxi- eties as a child might. Her clouded face turned on him sparkling with new animation, “I'll tell you all about that another time. Now—" He interrupted her: “But there may not be another time. You know I'll be leaving soon.” She looked amazed, quite aghast. “Leaving?” she excl:lmed—“l-vlnfl Foleys?” 5 “Yes, I must be back in San Fran- cisco in a few days. And it takes a day to ride from here to Sacramento.” she stopped, looking thor- oughly dashed. &m what was in her mind; %% “But not to-morrow > - asked, drawing near to 3 “‘speaking urgently, “you'll bes row?” “Yes, I'll be here to-mo - My norse won't be able to take the' ride il the day after, He'R gone tender on his forefoot.” R A0S She was sijent, looking down on the path and absently trailing the leaf- gecked tip of her switch in tite dust. He regarded her with tendér amuse- ment “Yov haven't seen the spring yet,” shé said abruptly without raising her eyes. : The remark was startling. It was the discovery of this spripg which had led to the unpleasantness -with the squatter. The colonel would probably have gone on paying the taxes und let- ting the squatter live on his premises till the end of things, if the spring had not waked him to the possibilities of ownership. He colored a little. For the first time it seemed to -him the young girl had shown bad taste. “No," he answered, “I .haven't seen it. 1 didn’t see that it Was necessary. I've had the water analyzed. That was enough.” “But you ought to see it she con- tinued, still looking at the end of the switch. “It's a wonderful spring. Everybody says so. 1 discevered it.” Her face, as she began . speaking, flushed faintly and then deeper.. When she had finished the ecolor was spread over it in a clear transparent blush: “I doubt whether TI'll be able to get there,” he replied with just & trace of stiffness in his manner.. “It's quite & walk, I understand, and it's so hot—" She suddenly raised her eyes and moved toward him, her look. one of flushed embarrassment, but her man- ner urgent and determined. “Ill take you there,” she said hur- riedly. “I know a way that's quite shady, a path hardly anybody knows of. 1 found it, the spring and the path both, and I would so like to show it to you.” Her volce fell to the key of coaxing, Wwhich was belled by her countenance, full of a keen, waiting anxiousness. She seemed to the man to be tremu- lously hanging on hié word of con- sent. % “I guess Pil have to go,” he said, looking down at her with eyes from which all disapproval had gone. (“I'll come up here for you—let's see! The late afternoon’s the best time because it's cooler, Bay five. How's that?" “Here?” she said, looking away un- easil “No, don’'t come here. ~ ¥ou know—" she drew cioser to him and resting her finger-tips on the lapel of his coat pressed them gently against his chest, half whispering—"this is to be a secret expedition. No one must know about this but us two.” The colonel backed away, eyeing her with tragical gravity from under his down-drawn brows.’ “Look here, young woman,” he said, “what are you up to? Are you trying to kidnap the colonel?” Her dimple came, but no further indica- tion of amusement disturbed the fluttered uneasiness of her countenance, 7 “No, no,” she said quickly: then tilting her head to one side and lpoking at him cajolingly, “but how I would like to!" “I don’t think it's safe for me to go,” he answered. “I've a susplcion you're some kind of a wood nymph or fairy who steels good-looking young men like me and keeps them in the woods for play- mates. Can you give me. any guaranty that I'll reappear?” “I'll lead you back myself.” And you will go? That's settled. ~Well, ‘listen: down the road before you come to the turn there's a break in the fence. It's near the large oak that throws a limb over the road. I'll be there waiting for you at half-past four. Five's too late. And the path I spoke of goes up behind the oak and is ever so much shorter than the one everybody takes. That's this way, back of the cow shed and the garden.” She Indicated it, and both turned to fol- low the direction of her pointing finger. As they stood with their backs to the road they heard a heavy, regular footfall padding through the dust. The girl turned first, and her quick, half-fright- ened ejaculation, “It's father!”” made the colonel swerve around like a weathercock. It was too late for him to escape. Beau- regard Allen was close to the gate and was looking at him with a somber, un- moving gaze. He would have known his old enemy in a minute. But yet there was a ‘change, subtile and demolishing as that which had made Alice a stranger to him. The debo- nair arrogance that he had once taken for a proud self-respect was gone. A de- struction of the upholding sense of posi- tion and responsibility had bowed the up- right shoulders and made the haughty hawk-eye heavy and evasive. John Beau- regard Allen had failed in life, gone down step by step; not in one cataclysmic rush, but gradually, with a woman and children striving desperately to hold him back. His drinking had been a habit of recent vears, a weakness grown of ill luck and despondency. It showed in a coarsened heaviness of feature, a reddened’ weight of eyelld. He wore a palr of loose, dusty trousers, thick, unbrushed boots, the blue- and-white cotton shirt of the country- man, and an unbuttoned sack coat that sagged from his bent shoulders. A griz- zled brown beard straggled ® over his breast, and the hat pushed back from his forehead showed Nair of the same color. Yet there still lingered about him the suggestion of the man’ of breeding and education, and once again upright with the hope of life restored to him he would have been a fine looking man. He knew who the colonel was before he turned, but he too realized there was no possibility of escape. In that one moment before his éye challenged that .of his old adversary he had recognized the situation and decided on his course. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat and tried to square his shoulders into thelr old proud polse. As his glance miet the colonel’s he withdrew one of his hands from his pocket and raised his hat. “How d'ye do,” he said In a deep, easy voice; “how d'ye do, Parrish? I heard you were here.”’ ’ The savolr faire of his address was re- markable. His eyes, however, consclous and ashamed, showed his discomfort in th emeeting. The colonel returned the salute and the two men stood facing each other, the gate between them. “Colonel Parrish,” said June in an em- barrassed volce, ‘‘came to see mother. Sue had such a nice talk with him. He says he doesn't think she's so much changed., “I havé to thank you,” said the father . with a faint reminiscence of his old grand manner, “for your kindness to my little girl last evening. June tells me in- troduced Rion Gracey and young to her. That's the son of A clay, I suppose?” % The colonel sald that it was. He was * quivering mirror. ay Simeon Bar- said, have had a pretty duM time if it hadn't been for you.” 7 g The colonel deprecated all thanks, He ' was now in the road, his hat raised in farewell. He had noticed that Allen made * no - allusion to his wife and thanked heaven that the man who had shown himself so dead to other decencies had enpugh left in him for that. A backward glance of final adieu showed him the father and daughter side by side by the gateway. The girl was smillng at him. The man stood with his ragged hat cere- moniously lifted over his heavy, hang- dog face, CHAPTER VIIL Uncle Jim. An hour beforc the time set by June Allen to go to the spring the colonel was' sitting in his room hefore & table littered -with papers, They were the title deeds and the tax certificates of the Parrish tract. They represented an unmarred record of purchase and pos- session from the date of acquisitign to the present time. As he looked them over he wondered agaln at the astound- ing boldness of Allen. Had he relied upon the rightful owner's lenfency when he should discover that the claim- ant'’s wife had once been Alice Jayce? The thought cailed forth an angry sen- tence 0f pain and disgust. Perhups so. It was of a piece with Allen’s behavior. But v The colonel .rose to his feet. He had made up his mind what he intended to do, Allen's baseness had no bearing on the matter. ~Alice and her children ‘were all that concerned him. ~ He threw the papers into the table drawer, looked at his watch, and picking up his hat, left the room. 3 . There were many breaks in . the fence—lengths of it were entirely _down—but the one June had selected as the place of rendezvous was easy to discover because of the Hve oak toat Bréew near it. The great tree cast a heavy, twisted limb across the road, making an arch of foliage almost as impervious to sunbeams as a roof. A narrow path made a pale, meandering line through the grass beyond it, and then came and went, red as a scar, through the” shrubbery of the hillside. As the colonel drew néar he saw June sitting on the ground under the! tree. Her figure, clothed in . a dress of duill blue, made a harmonious note of color in the gold, bronze and olive of the landscape. 8 She caught a glimpse of his head over the fence and jumped up with a gestyre of welcome. Then as he stepped through the gap she met him with ex- tended hand. Viewed at close range, her appear- ance was an llluminating commentary on a poverty which could never be de- graded or ignoble. Nothing could have been cheaper or poorer than her scanty cotton gown or her straw hat. But she had taken pains that the ribbon gn her hat should match the tint of her dress, and the old-fashioned turn- over collar of lace which encircled her throat was arranged with a dainty pre- ciseness. She had even put on her one and only pair of corsets——a treasured article of dress reserved for parties and the Sabbath—so unusual was the occa- sion. The colonel did not notice these delicacies of detail. He only saw, as any other man would have seen, that a rare distinguishing fineriess marked her despite her poor appavel coarsened hands. Tt would have takenh & woman's deeper insight to seée that this.was a girl in whom a taste for all that:was luxurious, costly and elegant ‘was-in- nate and ready to wake at the first call. ™ They followed the-path across the open land and then began. ascending. through the chaparral, the girl leading. The shrubs, which were low-growing,: offered no shade, and the sum, though to the west, followed them with scorching beams. It was by no means a gentle climb and they spoke little, At intervals a lizard flicked acress the path, and an occaslonal stirring of the underbrusH fold of the stealthy passage of a snake. Fre the whole hillside aromatic odors, - that seemed to be ascending in swimming un- dulations, rose into the heat, not sweet and delicate as is the breath of ga S, but coarse, pungent, almost rank, in triumphant, wild vitality. In an opening under the pines they paused for a rest. The colonel noticed that his companion was not as talkative as she had been oh the two former occa- slons. There was an air of troubled ab- straction about her. She indicated not- able points in the landscape like a dutiful cleerone, but the intensity of interest she had displayed in arranging the trip seeméd gone. He wondered if she had revealed to some member of her family her design of showing him the spring and had been reproved for it. The last portion of the walk was again through thickets, up a hill where the poison oak grew close and high, and then among larger growths of bay and alder, with the Digger pines raising their dim bluish shapes among the more julcy greens. Here they began.to follow a faint till, a tiny thread that broke into.a shower of drops over roots and splinters of stone. Finally, pushing aside intruding boughs, she led him into an opening ringed by tall pine trunks, and cried tri- umphantly: “Here it is! Do you wonder no one ever found 1t?" There was a hollowing out of the bank under the eaves of a large pine root, and here the spring had been bubbling un- noticed for centuries. A delicate fringing of fern hung from the moist earth mo- tionless over its reflection in the small, Near by there was.an outeropping of rock, and broken bits had been used to pave the edge where the crystal Hip of water trembled, and to make a little channel for it to slip down. A rusty tin cup hung on a dead bough, and the girl rinsed it, and dipping it in the clear depths handed it to him, “Try it,” she sald. “It tastes quite dif- ferent here among the pine roots with the smell of the woods all round.” He drank it, marveling at the sharp, . acrid tang. She hung the cup back at the twig, and taking off her hat sat down on a bent root that the pine above it seemed to have thrown out in a kindly desire to be hospli to a flat shoulder of rock, rusted with lichen. “Hasn't it hidden itself in a spot?”’ she sald. “And didn't it hide {tself well? Coming on it from the other side you never would have suspected a spring . was here among the roots of the trees,” “And you discovered it?” X She nodded, looking down into the tiny 4 basin, o “I traced it.up from the little stream March, jone ,dly wg‘m 1 was prowling."” “Prowling! What's prowling?’ 55 “Prowling?’ ‘she smiled, but pensively, her eyes on the water. “It's just wander- " ing about, generally alone, and not going extremely uncomfortable, and after the' to any particular place. I've prowled manner of his sex, wanted to escape from this unpleasant position with the ut- most speed. He opened the gate and Slowy passsa. through the apertite.in 0 through the to the disputed domain. 4 3 “It was very kind of you, Parrish,” he >, » g over here. I can lead you straight to'th ‘two old shafts and o fi ~and the remains of the old windlass. “They’re almost entirely hidden by wild grapes and things. g “We appreciated: it. June would ° The colonel subsided on street of sta that runs away from it. I found it in been glad to find a shelter, Show you the. dumps - It was now her companion’s turn to look pensive, He had sunk the two shafts, and i them, as in the property, how many thousands f dollars he did not like te think. ! “Those shafts were made,” he said, “ff- ‘teen vears ago when we all thought you had only to turn over a few shovelfuls of carth and find your fortune.” He struck the rock with his hand and said laughingly: “What an old fraud you've been!” » y B::e looked at him without returning his smile. . “Colonel Parrish,” she said anxiously, “dia you sink those two shafts?’ He nodded, once more surprised at her indirect reference to his ownership of the land. She made no Teply, but, plucking a fern growing out of the earth near her, began slowly to shred its leaves from its stalk and sprinkle them on the surface of the water. “And,” she said suddenly, ‘you intend now, quite soon, to build a hotel back here, under the pines, at the top of the hill, don’t you?" That she should disappoint him with these persistent and almost indecent in- quiries, considering the situation, hurt and irritated him. It was so out of keep- ing with her general suggestion of some- thing sensitive and girlishly naive. “I had intended building a hotel; came here with that intention. But—" He rose to his feet and sald coldly, “Don’t you think we'd better be going back again? It's quite a long walk.” “‘But?"—she echoed, unheeding his last sentences—*‘but what?” She made no movement save to clasp her hands on the broken fern. Her face, raised to him, suddenly was pale and set in a curiods tenseness of inquiry. It moved the colonel strangely. “But what?’ she repeated insistently. “You were going to say something ~lse.” “My dear little girl,” he answered, “don’t trouble vour head about these things. It's—it's—a man’s dispute and for men to settle.*But rest assured of one thing, you'll not suffer by it.” “1!” she exclaimed; * not T that mat- ters. But, Colonel Parrish, our mother.” She stopped, her voice quivering like 2 taut string, v “Your mother?” sald the dolonel, with a rising inflection. Y 0 “You see how it is with her. Let us stay. Let us stay a little while longer.” \ “Did you bring me up here to ask me this?" he said, looking steadily at her. “Yes, 1 wanted to see you somewhere away from the house, and I thought the spring would be a good excuse. Talking of these things makes me’’—the tears rose to her eyes and stood thick in them— “makes me do like this."” They ram over and she brushed them away with her hand. “You can see; you understand about mother,” she went on, struggling to speak clearly. “It's only a question of time. It's nearly the end ,of everything. And 1 brought you up,here to-day to ask you to let us stay—right or wrong—let us stay till then.” Her voice broke and she held her head down, trying to suppress her sobs. The, colonel turned away, walking 'to where the tin cup hung, took it off its twig and looked into it. . “Don’'t do that,” he said, his voice rough “for heaven's sake, stop. I'd be angry with you for asking me such & thing if you werén’t so—so—I don’t know what. Of course, you're going to stay.” “What?"—he was mnot-looking at her, but was conscious that she had stiffened, both In mental and physical fiber, at the word~"you're going to let us stay “Of course. As long as you want, al- ways. Don't talk any more about it.” - A quick sound came from her, and he ‘heard the rustle of her dress as she rose, her footsteps on the stone near him, and then felt her beside him. She seized the hand hanging at his side, pressed it against the softness of her bosom and against her cheek, then dropped it with a murmur of broken words. He turned on her brusquely. Her face was shining with tears, but she was smil- ing. She tried to speak to him, but he laid a finger on her lips and looked at her, shaking his head. “Don’t say any more about it,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I can't stand this sort of thing. I'm not used to it.” She gently lald her hand on his and drawing it away unsealed her lips.- She was smiling radiantly, her dimple deep. And for a moment she enveloped him in a beaming look of affection and gratitude. ““There's lots I want to say, but I sup- pose I must be obedient,” she murmured. “Of course, you must. Come, we ought to be going. Put your hat on or you'll get all freckled.” She went back to the spring and picked up her hat. As she pulled the elastic down -over her cropped locks she said Ty: “"’i feel so different from what I did when I came up—at least twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter.” “You'd better not forget how to accom- plish that miracle,” said her companion. “Thirty years from now you'll probably “find it a great deal more to the point than you do to-day.” They started down the path, laughing. The red eyg of the sun, a flaming ball, stared at tl between the trunks of the pines and shot long pencils of flushed light into the rustling depths of the thickets. June led the way as before, but she was a different guide. She seemed as light-hearted going down as she had been oppressed coming up. The colonel was to realize later how ready her optimism was to respond to the first glimmer of cheer, how quick and far was the swing of the pendulum. Coming to a grassed plateau under the pines they paused for a moment's rest. From the high crest of ground they could see the cottage with the cultivation’ of its garden cutting into the untilled land, llke an island of* green floating in a yellow sea. It looked meaner and more insignificant than ever in the midst of the lazily outflung landscape now swimming in a bath of colored light. The colonel saw in imagination a house he owned in San Francisco on Folsom street. He had bought it as a favor from a pioneer friend whose fortunes were declining. It was the statellest house of what was then a y houses, with wide windows, vine-draped balconies and -scrolled iron gates shutting out the’ turmoil of the street. The thoukht had been in his mind when it came into his possession that it was the sort of house he would have givel Alice, and the still more sacred tho had foll that his children’s lau ter might have echoed through its halls. Now he looked down on a hovel, .also his property, where Alice i had and in her daughter had prayed that ‘she mlt‘!:, be left to dfe! Life and its such a little witeh I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you had.” “You. don’t have to be a ‘witch to ses the smoke coming out of the chim- ney.” A faint reek of smoke curled up from the cottage roof into the evening air. The colonel looked at her with a sheepish side glance. * She returned it, smiling in mischievous triumph. “I'm afraid we're not beth witches,” she said saucily. The rest over, they comtinued their desceift by a wider path In parts of which they walked side by side, talk- ing together sometimes, or June talk- ing, for she was very loquacious now, while ‘her companion listened. At the end of a description of their life in Virginia City he sald, “How long Is it since you've been in San Francisco? Years, isn't it?" “Oh, years.and years, I was born there, but we left when I was a ehild.” “It must have been a prodigious length of time ago—in the glacial period, you might say. Some time you and Rosamund must come down there and visit me. Tl find a place for you to stay, and take good care of you. Would you like it?" ''Oh, Colonel Parrish!” Words failed her. The path was wide and she was ':lnllkmg beside him. He saw her eyes shine. 3 : “T'd see to it that yvou'd have a good time. Lots of parties and first-rate part- ners. You'd never sit along the wall there. The fellows would be just breaking their necks to dance with you. And theajers— you like theaters, don't you?" ‘“‘Theaters!” she fairly gasped. I saw ‘Mazeppa' in Virginia, and it was—oh, I haven't got the words! It was something wonderful "’ “Well, we'll see 'em all. Better forty times than you saw in Virginla, and every night if you want. It'll be just as good a time as San Francisco and the colonel can give two girls likke you and Rosa- mund.” He looked down at her, smiling. She re- turned the lodk and said: ““Why are you so good to us? I don't un- derstand it.” “Don’t try to. Never exert your brain in needless ways. That's a fundamental law for the preservation of health. In this particular case 1'd be good to.my- self. You don't know what it -would be for me to have two nice girls to take around. I'm a lonely old devil, you know.” “Are you?” she sald, with a note of somewhat pensive incredulity. “You've neyer been married, have you?’ “Nup,” said the colonel. “You'll have to look upon us as your she continued, ‘“‘or perhaps " The path was narrow and she looked into hig face with the glance of demure coquetry he was beginning to }lu?rw and watch for. “Which do you pre- or?” “Daughters,” into the bushes. “But we're already provided with a father,” she replled. *“And it would be such a pity to waste you. Wouldn't you care to take the position of uncle? That's vacant.” “All right, uncle~Uncle Jim.” “Uncle Jim,” she repeated thoughtfully, “It seems funny to come into possession ofdycur first uncle when you're 20 years old.” - There was a bend in the path.and the bushes grew almost across it. She sud- denly quickened her speed, passed him and rap on before. “‘Come on,” she called over her shoul- der. “I'm just hitting the trall again.” He followed her, turned the bend, and pushing the branches aside saw her a few feet ahead of him standing on a flat stone about a foot high, which directly inter- cepted the path. ““What are you mounted on that for?” he said, laughing. “You leok as if you were going to make a speech.” “That's what I'd like to do,” she an- swered, “but I was told not to, and I'm very obedient. Come nearer—quite close.” He approached, a little puzzled, for he saw that she was suddenly grave. The stone raised her a few inches above him, and as he drew near she leaned downm, took him by the lapels of his coat and drawing him close bent and kissed him softly on thé forehead. Then she drew back and, still Jolding him, looked with tender eyes into his. “Uncle Jim,” she said, “that's - your christening.’ = The next moment she was down and flitting on ahead of him. “The path’s; very narrow,” she called. “You must be content to follow the oldest Hving inhabitant.” T At the gap in the fence he bade her good-by. To his great delight she caught at his hesitating suggestion that she should occasionally write to him and tell him of their life and her mother's health. He told her he would be up again, he thought, some time during the summer. The date was un- certain. Then, with her hand in his, she sald with a wiliful shake of her head: “No, not a Dios. It's hasta manana, Uncle Jim. I won’'t have It anything but hasta manana.” he said gruffly, looking “Well, then, hasta manana,” he an- am{od. “And God bless you, little gl That ‘evening Colonel Parrish went to see Cusack. He brought with him the title deeds and tax certificates of the Parrish tract. They lay scattered .on the office table on which the colonel, as he talked, leaned a supporting el- bow. The interview was short, and there were moments, when it was heated, till Cusack realized, as he af- terward expressed it ‘to a frined, “there are certain kinds of fools there's no good bucking up " The colonel had determined to all further litigation by making a legal transfer of the to Allen by means of a He talked down argument 5 “Why the devil shoulc I the place?’ he vociferated. “I'm sick of 8 on it and a cent. It's been a white elephant AR S bie SOkt & P ; s a fresh “damned little m. : spring hasn't power to raise a mos- quito from the dead.” “Did you to find a “I didn’t expect to find what I did, R ek as ¥ lamp chimney. Ly How Inscrutable, how aw- mysterl A ful, it all was! ‘The volce of June at his side roused him. = 1y ‘ments more to herself than to - o ‘you kno " he %{ y?ngbf ‘second vnh;:u You're <7 eye. It could be made to support them well. No matter how low Allen might sink they nced never want again. The hilly part, where the spring was, could be sold or leased to some of the’enterprising city hotel men. Or. if they objected to that, they could increase their market gardening to the dimensions of a large ag- ricultural enterprise. They could rent to a rancher a portion of the rich, unculti- vated land now lying idle, and thus gain an income sufficient for them to develop their own particular domain. To people of thrift and energy the possibilities of the tract were large. Alice ecould die in Peace. Her girls were provided for As the cottage came into view the rider reined up and gazed at it. No smoke sued from the chimney. They all stil! slept. In the crystal stilluess of the. morning it looked peacefully picturesque, half veiled in its greenery of shrubs and vines: The air about it was impregnated with the delicate breath of the roses that lined the path from' the gate to the bal- cony. He gave a slight shake to his rein, and Kit Carson, who had been impatiently .pawing with a proud forefoot, moved for- ward. The rider’s glance wandered to a ‘window under the sloping roof, veiled by a blue curtain. Was that the girls’ reom? The girls! The two faces rose before his mental vision and he turned his eyes from the window and let them plerce, farsee= ing and steady—into the distance, into the future. He had cowered before its emptiness. Now the faces of the sisters rose softly bright in its melancholy ob- scurity, the faces of Alice's daughters— daughters that should have been his. A week after he reached San Francisco he had a letter from June, a childish, in- coherent letter, full of impassioned terms of gratitude, broken into by distressed comments on her mother's heaith. Then, in more sprightly vein, she told him how Mr. Barclay was stopping over at Foleys for a few days and came nearly every day and helped them in the garden, and Mr. Rion Gracey, riding back from Foleys te the Buckeye Belle one. evening, had dropped in for a visit and stayed to sup- per. : The colonel seemed to see her as she wrote, laughing at one moment and then \stopping to dash the tears off her cheek as she had done at the spring: He heard . Beauregard Allen had from no one else. accepted the transfer of the property as a business transaction, the manner- in which his adversary had. desired him ta accept it. To his friends in San Francisco the colonel explained his speedy return and the dropping of the case as he had done to Cusack. It was not worth the time and trouble. The land was remote, the spring a disappointment; he was glad to be rid of it all. Three weeks after this, sitting alorie in his office, he recelved by the afterncon mall a newspaper.. It was the Dally Chronicle, an organ which molded public opinion and supported a precarious exist- ence in Foleys. Unfolding the fimsy sheet he found a marked paragraph, and turning to it he saw it to be Alice’s death notice. She had dled three days befors “at the residence of her husband, John Beauregard Allen.” The paper slipped from his hand to the floor and his head sank. He sat thus tlll the twilight fell, ,alone in the dim office where the golden letters that spelled his name—the name of the successful man—shone faintly on the window. That same afternon the dead woman's husband and children returned to the cot- tage after having committed all that re- mained of her to the grave. Rosamunhd had succumbed to the strain and sorrow of the last few days and gone to bed prostrated with a headache. . Allen, mo- rose and spééchless, had flung himself In a chair in the living-room and there sat, a, heavy, imert figure. He had drunk heavily during the last few days of his wife’s illness, for he had always loved her, and in his weakness of heart had fled from the sight of her suffering and’ tried to find surcease for-his own. It was left to June to prepare their sup- per and accomplish the tollsome domestic tasks that Rosamund shared with her. ‘With a dead heart she set out the meal, watered the garden and finally set fotth in a flare of sunset to find Bloss and drive her home. The cow had evidently strayed far. June's search led her to the ts which Bloss was known to frequent, but she could find no traca of her. Sometimes the girl's voice, broken and hoarse with weep- on such a night as this, while her heart ‘was bursting with sorrow, ended the bit- terness of the day with -so wearisome a hunt. Finally,"exhausted by long hours of watching and the fatigue of grief, she burst into unrestrained sobs. With her face shining with tears, her breast con- she tore her way through thicks . ts scrambled over rocky spurs, every iw and then sending up a quavering cry strayed cow. At length, brushing & copse of bay and alder, she the torn face of the hill whers ide had taken place. The was covered with a debris of. and dead trees. Nature, to repair damage, was already hiding the raw- of the lacerated expanse under a veil smail sprouting vegetation. Here, screen of leaves, she at last ht of Bloss’ red and white side. to the cow, who gave a of - her tall, but no other movement. June's Irritated SAve way to a spasm of rage, stooping, she picked up a handful of the loose pieces of stone strewn about her and threw one at the run- égaififiggsggg- ¢ i B 28 i . @way. It struck with a thud. Bloss Save a surprised snort, and, wheeling, brushed through the thicket. June fol- lowed her, the stones pressed in a clutching hand against her breast, ons now and then launched in the direction These missiles, combined ‘with the thought of home, appeared to animate Bloss’ leisurely movements she hastened forward through ‘brush and over rock at a lolloping, un- couth trot. + The dusk was settling ito night when they reached the shed. June's tears had ceased, but the abstraction of held her. She fastened the shed on the cow, and still absently three'or four pieces of sfone, £ father. . The daughters of Beauregard en & < [) w M