diggin'."

The excitement finally overcame the inertia of the party, and each man started deliberately to meet the major and his captive. Spidertracks, faithful to his profession, kept well in advance of the others. Suddenly he exclaimed to himself:

"Good Lord! don't they know each other? The major didn't wear that beard when in New York; but the boy--he's just the same scamp, in spite of his dirt and rags. If _she_ were to see them now--but, pshaw! 'twould all fall flat--no live paper to take hold of the matter and work it up."

"There, curse your treacherous heart!" roared the major, as he gave his prisoner a push which threw him into the reporter's arms. "Now we're in a civilized community, and you'll have a chance of learning the opinions of gentlemen on such irregularities. Tried to kill me, gentlemen, upon my honor!--did it after I had shared my eatables and pocket-pistol with him, too. Did it to get my dust. Got me at a disadvantage for a moment, and made a formal demand for the dust, and backed his request with a pistol--my own pistol, gentlemen! I've only just reached here; I don't yet know who's here, but I imagine there's public spirit enough to discourage treachery. Will some one see to him while I take something?"

Spidertracks drew his revolver, mildly touched the young man on the shoulder, and remarked:

"Come on."

The ex-knight of the pencil bowed his prisoner into an abandoned gopher-hole (_i.e._, an artificial cave,) cocked his revolver, and then stretched himself on the ground and devoted himself to staring at the unfortunate youth. To a student of human nature Ernest Mattray was curious, fascinating, and repulsive. Short, slight, handsome, delicate, nervous, unscrupulous, selfish, effeminate, dishonest, and cruel, he was an excellent specimen of what city life could make of a boy with no father and an irresolute mother.

The reporter, who had many a time studied faces in the Tombs, felt almost as if at his old vocation again as he gazed into the restless eyes and sullen features of the prisoner.

Meanwhile Happy Rest was becoming excited. There had been some little fighting done since the settlement of the place, but as there had been no previous attempt at highway robbery and murder made in the vicinity, the prisoner was an object of considerable interest.

In fact, the major told so spirited a story, that most of the inhabitants strolled up, one after another, to look at the innovator, while that individual himself, with the modesty which seems inseparable from true greatness, retired to the most secluded of the three apartments into which the cave was divided, and declined all the attentions which were thrust upon him.

The afternoon had faded almost into evening, when a decrepit figure, in a black dress and bonnet, approached the cave, and gave Spidertracks a new element for the thrilling report he had composed and mentally rearranged during his few hours of duty as jailer.

"Beats the dickens," muttered the reporter to himself, "how these Sisters of Charity always know when a tough case has been caught.

Natural enough in New York. But where did _she_ come from? Who told her?

Cross, beads, and all. Hello! Oh, Louise Mattray, you're a deep one; but it's a pity your black robe isn't quite long enough to hide the very tasty dress you wore this morning? Queer dodge, too--wonder what it means? Wonder if she's caught sight of the major, and don't want to be recognized?"

The figure approached.

"May I see the prisoner?" she asked.

"No one has a better right, Mrs. Mattray," said the guardian of the cave, with a triumphant smile, while the poor woman started and trembled. "Don't be frightened--no one is going to hurt you. Heard all about it, I suppose?--know who just missed being the victim?"

"Yes," said the unhappy woman, entering the cave.

When she emerged it was growing quite dark. She passed the reporter with head and vail down, and whispered:

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," said the reporter, quickly. "Going to stay until you see how things go with him?"

She shook her head and passed on.

The sky grew darker. The reporter almost wished it might grow so dark that the prisoner could escape unperceived, or so quickly that a random shot could not find him. There were strange noises in camp.

The storekeeper, who never traveled except by daylight, was apparently harnessing his mules to the wagon--he was moving the wagon itself to the extreme left of the camp, where there was nothing to haul but wood, and even that was still standing in the shape of fine old trees.

There seemed to be an unusual clearness in the air, for Spidertracks distinctly heard the buzz of some earnest conversation. There seemed strange shadows floating in the air--a strange sense of something moving toward him--something almost shapeless, yet tangible--something that approached him--that gave him a sense of insecurity and then of alarm.

Suddenly the indefinable something uttered a yell, and resolved itself into a party of miners, led by the gallant and aggrieved major himself, who shouted:

"Lynch the scoundrel, boys--that's the only thing to do!"

The excited reporter sprang to his feet in an agony of genuine humanity and suppressed itemizing, and screamed:

"Major, wait a minute--you'll be sorry if you don't!"

But the gallant major had been at the bar for two or three hours, preparing himself for this valorous deed, and the courage he had there imbibed knew not how to brook delay--not until the crowd had reached the mouth of the cave and found it dark, and had heard one unduly prudent miner suggest that it might be well to have a light, so as to dodge being sliced in the dark.

"Bring a light quick, then," shouted the major. "_I'll_ drag him out when it comes; he knows _my_ grip, curse him!"

A bunch of dried grass was hastily lighted and thrown into the cave, and the major rapidly followed it, while as many miners as could crowd in after him hastened to do so. They found the major, with white face and trembling limbs, standing in front of the lady for whose sake they had done so much elaborate dressing in the morning, and who they had afterwards wrathfully seen departing in the stage.

The major rallied, turned around, and said:

"There's some mistake here, gentlemen. Won't you have the kindness to leave us alone?"

Slowly--very slowly--the crowd withdrew. It seemed to them that, in the nature of things, the lady ought to have it out with the major with pistols or knives for disturbing her, and that they, who were in all the sadness of disappointment at failure of a well-planned independent execution, ought to see the end of the whole affair. But a beseeching look from the lady herself finally cleared the cave, and the major exclaimed:

"Louise, what does this mean?"

"It means," said the lady, with most perfect composure, "that, thanks to a worthless father and a bad bringing-up by an incapable mother, Ernest has found his way into this country. I came to find him, and I found him in this hole, to which his affectionate father brought him to-day. It is about as well, I imagine, that I helped him to escape, seeing to what further kind attentions you had reserved him."

"Please don't be so icy, Louise," begged the major. "He attempted to rob and kill me, the young rascal; besides, I had not the faintest idea of who he was."

"Perhaps," said the lady, still very calm, "you will tell me from whom he inherited the virtues which prompted his peculiar actions towards you? His _mother_ has always earned her livelihood honorably."

"Louise," said the major, with a humility which would have astonished his acquaintance, "won't you have the kindness to reserve your sarcasm until I am better able to bear it? You probably think I have no heart--I acknowledge I have thought as much myself--but _something_ is making me feel very weak and tender just now."

The lady looked critically at him for a moment, and then burst into tears.

"Oh, God!" she sobbed, "what else is there in store for this poor, miserable, injured life of mine?"

"Restitution," whispered the major softly--"if you will let me make it, or try to make it."

The weeping woman looked up inquiringly, and said only the words:

"And she?"

"My first wife?" answered the major. "Dead--_really_ dead, Louise, as I hope to be saved. She died several years ago, and I longed to do you justice then, but the memory of our parting was too much for my cowardly soul. If you will take me as I am, Louise, I will, as long as I live, remember the past, and try to atone for it."

She put her hand in his, and they left the gopher-hole together. As they disappeared in the outer darkness, there emerged from one of the compartments of the cave an individual whose features were indistinguishable in the darkness, but who was heard to emphatically exclaim:

"If I had the dust, I'd start a live daily here, just to tell the whole story; though the way he got out didn't do _me_ any particular credit."

For days the residents of Happy Rest used all available mental stimulants to aid them in solving the mystery of the major and the wonderful lady; but, as the mental stimulants aforesaid were all spirituous, the results were more deplorable than satisfactory. But when, a few days later, the couple took the stage for Rum Valley, the enterprising Spidertracks took an outside passage, and at the end of the route had his persistency rewarded by seeing, in the Bangup House, a Sister of Charity tenderly embrace the major's fair charge, start at the sight of the major, and then, after some whispering by the happy mother, sullenly extend a hand, which the major grasped heartily, and over which there dropped something which, though a drop of water, was not a rain-drop. Then did Spidertracks return to the home of his adoption, and lavish the stores of his memory; and for days his name was famous, and his liquor was paid for by admiring auditors.

[Illustration]