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