“It’s been more’n six months now that she’s seemed unhappy and lonesome, and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I’ve ketched her lookin’ at me sort of timid and pitying. And she writes to somebody. And for the last week she’s been gathering her own things,—trinkets, and furbelows, and jew’lry,—and, Jack, I think she’s goin’ off. I could stand all but that. To have her steal away like a thief!” He put his face downward to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound but the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and moved to the open window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and the bed and its occupant were in shadow. “What shall I do, Jack?” said the voice from the darkness.
The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side, “Spot the man, and kill him on sight.”
“But, Jack”—
“He’s took the risk!”
“But will that bring her back?”
Jack did not reply, but moved from the window towards the door.
“Don’t go yet, Jack; light the candle and sit by the table. It’s a comfort to see ye, if nothin’ else.”
Jack hesitated and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from his pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown’s face was turned to the wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he cut them, and dealt one card on the opposite side of the table towards the bed, and another on his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce; his own card a king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time “dummy” had a queen and himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. It brought his adversary a deuce and himself a king again. “Two out of three,” said Jack audibly.
“What’s that, Jack?” said Brown.
“Nothing.”
Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes and his imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes confusing.
Meanwhile some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin’s presence, or the anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept. Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window and looked out on the town of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully, its harsh outlines softened and subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the ditches and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling field. Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star should fall—He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the phenomenon was not repeated.
The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached the table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the flickering candlelight. It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in a woman’s hand,—
“Be at the corral with the buggy at three.”
The sleeper moved uneasily and then awoke. “Are you there, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack,—dreamed of old times. I thought that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack, was—who do you think?—you!”
The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed, the paper still in his hand.
“It’s a good sign, ain’t it?” queried Brown.
“I reckon! Say, old man, hadn’t you better get up?”
The “old man,” thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the assistance of Hamlin’s outstretched hand.
“Smoke?”
Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.
“Light?”
Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped the fragment—a fiery star—from the open window. He watched it as it fell, and then returned to his friend.
“Old man,” he said, placing his hands upon Brown’s shoulders, “in ten minutes I’ll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We won’t see each other agin; but, before I go, take a fool’s advice: sell out all you’ve got, take your wife with you, and quit the country. It ain’t no place for you nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go if she won’t. Don’t whine because you can’t be a saint and she ain’t an angel. Be a man, and treat her like a woman. Don’t be a d-d fool. Good-by.”
He tore himself from Brown’s grasp and leaped down the stairs like a deer. At the stable-door he collared the half-sleeping hostler, and backed him against the wall. “Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I’ll”—The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.
“The missis said you was to have the buggy,” stammered the man.
“D—n the buggy!” The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.
“Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?” said the man, who, like all his class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his welfare.
“Stand aside!”
The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the road. In another moment, to the man’s half-awakened eyes, he was but a moving cloud of dust in the distance, towards which a star just loosed from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.
But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles aways, heard a voice, pure as a sky-lark’s, singing afield. They who were asleep turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth, and love, and olden days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased their labors and leaned upon their picks to listen to a romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy sunrise.
CONDENSED NOVELS
MUCK-A-MUCK
AFTER COOPER
CHAPTER I
It was toward the close of a bright October day. The last rays of the setting sun were reflected from one of those sylvan lakes peculiar to the Sierras of California. On the right the curling smoke of an Indian village rose between the columns of the lofty pines, while to the left the log cottage of Judge Tompkins, embowered in buckeyes, completed the enchanting picture.
Although the exterior of the cottage was humble and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the other. The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, and the walls were adorned with paintings from the pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens, Tintoretto, Michael Angelo, and the productions of the more modern Turner, Kensett, Church, and Bierstadt. Although Judge Tompkins had chosen the frontiers of civilization as his home, it was impossible for him to entirely forego the habits and tastes of his former life. He was seated in a luxurious armchair, writing at a mahogany escritoire, while his daughter, a lovely young girl of seventeen summers, plied her crotchet-needle on an ottoman beside him. A bright fire of pine logs flickered and flamed on the ample hearth.
Genevra Octavia Tompkins was Judge Tompkins’s only child. Her mother had long since died on the Plains. Reared in affluence, no pains had been spared with the daughter’s education. She was a graduate of one of the principal seminaries, and spoke French with a perfect