Mr. Hamlin (doubtfully): "You mean a run of luck?"

Donna Maria (rapidly, ignoring Mr. Hamlin's ill.u.s.tration): "Well, perhaps _I_ have reason to say so. Poor Donna Dolores was my friend.

Yet, would you believe there were people--you know how ridiculous is the gossip of a town like this--there are people who believed that he was paying attention to ME!"

Mrs. Sepulvida hung her head archly. There was a long pause. Then Mr.

Hamlin called faintly--

"Pete!"

"Yes, Mars Jack."

"Ain't it time to take that medicine?"

When Dr. d.u.c.h.esne returned he ignored all this little byplay, and even the anxious inquiries of Olly, and said to Mr. Hamlin--

"Have you any objection to my sending for Dr. Mackintosh--a devilish clever fellow?"

And Mr. Hamlin had none. And so, after a private telegram, Dr.

Mackintosh arrived, and for three or four hours the two doctors talked in an apparently unintelligible language, chiefly about a person whom Mr. Hamlin was satisfied did not exist. And when Dr. Mackintosh left, Dr. d.u.c.h.esne, after a very earnest conversation with him on their way to the stage office, drew a chair beside Mr. Hamlin's bed.

"Jack!"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you got everything fixed--all right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jack!"

"Yes, sir."

"You've made Pete very happy this morning."

Jack looked up at Dr. d.u.c.h.esne's critical face, and the doctor went on gravely--

"Confessing religion to him--saying you believed as he did!"

A faint laugh glimmered in the dark hollows of Jack's eyes.

"The old man," he said, explanatory, "has been preachin' mighty heavy at me ever since t'other doctor came, and I reckoned it might please him to allow that everything he said was so. You see the old man's bin right soft on me, and between us, doctor, I ain't much to give him in exchange. It's no square game!"

"Then you believe you're going to die?" said the doctor, gravely.

"I reckon."

"And you have no directions to give me?"

"There's a black hound at Sacramento--Jim Briggs, who borrowed and never gave back my silver-mounted Derringers, that I reckoned to give to you!

Tell him he'd better give them up or I'll"----

"Jack," interrupted Dr. d.u.c.h.esne, with infinite gentleness, laying his hand on the invalid's arm, "you must not think of me."

Jack pressed his friend's hand.

"There's my diamond pin up the spout at Wingdam, and the money gone to Lawyer Maxwell to pay witnesses for that old fool Gabriel. And then when Gabriel and me was escaping I happened to strike the very man, Perkins, who was Gabriel's princ.i.p.al witness, and he was dead broke, and I had to give him my solitaire ring to help him get away and be on hand for Gabriel. And Olly's got my gold specimen to be made into a mug for that cub of that old she tiger--Gabriel's woman--that Madame Devarges. And my watch--who _has_ got my watch?" said Mr. Hamlin, reflectively.

"Never mind those things, Jack. Have you any word to send--to--anybody?"

"No."

There was a long pause. In the stillness the ticking of a clock on the mantel became audible. Then there was a laugh in the ante-room, where a professional brother of Jack's had been waiting, slightly under the influence of grief and liquor.

"Scotty ought to know better than to kick up a row in a decent woman's house," whispered Jack, faintly. "Tell him to dry up, or I'll"----

But his voice was failing him, and the sentence remained incomplete.

"Doc----" (after a long effort).

"Jack."

"Don't--let--on--to Pete--I fooled--him."

"No, Jack."

They were both still for several minutes. And then Dr. d.u.c.h.esne softly released his hand and laid that of his patient, white and thin, upon the coverlid before him. Then he rose gently and opened the door of the ante-room. Two or three eager faces confronted him. "Pete," he said, gravely, "I want Pete--no one else."

The old negro entered with a trembling step. And then catching sight of the white face on the pillow, he uttered one cry--a cry replete with all the hysterical pathos of his race, and ran and dropped on his knees beside--it! And then the black and the white face were near together, and both were wet with tears.

Dr. d.u.c.h.esne stepped forward and would have laid his hand gently upon the old servant's shoulder. But he stopped, for suddenly both of the black hands were lifted wildly in the air, and the black face with rapt eyeb.a.l.l.s turned toward the ceiling, as if they had caught sight of the steadfast blue beyond. Perhaps they had.

"O de Lord G.o.d! whose prechiss blood washes de brack sheep and de white sheep all de one colour! O de Lamb ob G.o.d! Sabe, sabe dis por', dis por'

boy. O Lord G.o.d, for MY sake. O de Lord G.o.d, dow knowst fo' twenty years Pete, ole Pete, has walked in dy ways--has found de Lord and Him crucified!--and has been dy servant. O de Lord G.o.d--O de bressed Lord, ef it's all de same to you, let all dat go fo' nowt. Let ole Pete go!

and send down dy mercy and forgiveness fo' _him_!"

CHAPTER X.

IN THE OLD CABIN AGAIN.

There was little difficulty in establishing the validity of Grace Conroy's claim to the Conroy grant under the bequest of Dr. Devarges.

Her ident.i.ty was confirmed by Mr. Dumphy--none the less readily that it relieved him of a distressing doubt about the late Mrs. Dumphy, and did not affect his claim to the mineral discovery which he had purchased from Gabriel and his wife. It was true that since the dropping of the lead the mine had been virtually abandoned, and was comparatively of little market value. But Mr. Dumphy still clung to the hope that the missing lead would be discovered.

He was right. It was some weeks after the death of Mr. Hamlin that Gabriel and Olly stood again beneath the dismantled roof-tree and bare walls of his old cabin on Conroy Hill. But the visit this time was not one of confidential disclosure nor lonely contemplation, but with a practical view of determining whether this first home of the brother and sister could be repaired and made habitable, for Gabriel had steadily refused the solicitations of Grace that he should occupy his more recent mansion. Mrs. Conroy and infant were at the hotel.

"Thar, Olly," said Gabriel, "I reckon that a cartload o' boards and a few days' work with willin' hands, will put that thar shanty back ag'in ez it used to be when you and me waz childun."