"To go where there never has been nor never will be a woman."

"Good! the mines will be just the place then. None of the fair s.e.x there, my boy. You can enjoy the privilege of doing up your own linen to the fullest extent. You won't have anybody to iron your collars there, you bet."

"Lead on--I follow!" I cried, almost like an actor on the stage.

I felt exhilarated--a wild, joyous sense of freedom. My two recent narrow escapes added to the pleasure with which I viewed my present prospects. This was better than sailing for some Juan Fernandez, or being clerk of the weather on Mount Washington. Ho! for Pike's Peak.

In those high solitudes, while heaping up the yellow gold which should purchase all the luxuries of life for the woman whom _sometime_ I should choose, I could, at the same time, be gradually overcoming my one weakness. When I did see fit to return to my native village, no man should be so calm, so cool, so self-possessed as John Flutter, Jr., mine-owner, late of the Rocky Mountains. I felt very bold over the prospect. I was not a bit bashful just then. I joined the adventurers, paying them in money for my seat in their wagons, and my place at their camp-table. In due time we reached the scene of action.

I would not go into any of the canvas villages which had sprung up like mushrooms. There might be a woman in some one of these places. I went directly into the hills, where I bought out a sick man's claim, and went to work. I blistered my white hands, but I didn't mind that much--there were no blue eyes to notice the disfigurement.

I had been at work six days. I was a good young man, and I would not dig on Sunday, as some of the fellows did. I sat in the door of my little hut, and read an old newspaper, and thought of those far-away days when I used to be afraid of the girls. How glad I felt that I was outgrowing that folly. A shadow fell across my paper, and I glanced up. Thunder out of a clear sky could not so have astonished me. There stood a young lady, smiling at me! None of those rough Western pioneer girls, either, but a pale, delicate, beautiful young lady, about eighteen, with cheeks like wild roses, so faintly, softly flushed with the fatigue of climbing, and great starry hazel eyes, and dressed in a fashionable traveling suit, made up in the latest style.

"Pardon me, sir, for startling you so," she said, pleasantly. "Can you give me a drink of water? I have been climbing until I am thirsty.

Papa is not far behind, around the rock there. I out-climbed him, you see--as I told him I could!" and she laughed like an angel.

Yes! it was splendid to find how I had improved! I jumped to my feet and made a low bow. I wasn't red in the face--I wasn't confused--I didn't stammer; I felt as cool as I do this moment, as I answered her courteously:

"Cer-cer-certainly, madam--miss, I mean--you shall have a spring fresh from me--a drink, I mean--we've a nice, cold spring in the rocks just behind the cabin; I'll get you one in a second."

"No such _great_ hurry, sir"--another smile.

I dashed inside and brought a tin cup--my only goblet--hurried to the spring, and brought her the sparkling draught, saying, as I handed it to her:

"You must excuse the din tipper, miss."

She took it politely! and began to quaff, but from some reason she choked and choked, and finally shook so, that she spilled the water all over the front breadth of her gray-check silk. She was laughing at my "din tipper," just as if the calmest people did not sometimes get the first letters of their words mixed up.

While she giggled and pretended to cough the old gentleman came in sight, puffing and blowing like a porpoise, and looking very warm. He told me he was "doing the mountains" for his daughter's health, and that they were going on to California to spend the winter; ending by stating that he was thirsty too, and so fatigued with his climb that he would be obliged to me if I would add a stick in his, if I had it.

Now I kept a little whisky for medicine, and I was only too anxious to oblige the girl's father, so I darted into the cabin again and brought out one of the two bottles which I owned--two bottles, just alike, one containing whisky, the other kerosene. In my confusion I--well, I was very hospitable, and I added as much kerosene as there was water; and when he had taken three large swallows, he began to spit and splutter; then to groan; then to double up on the hard rock in awful convulsions. I smelled the kerosene, and I felt that I had murdered him. It had come to this at last! My bashfulness was to do worse than urge me to suicide--it was to be the means of my causing the death of an estimable old gentleman--her father! She began to cry and wring her hands. As yet she did not suspect me! She supposed her father had fallen in a fit of apoplexy.

"If he dies, I will allow her always to think so," I resolved.

My eyes stuck out of my head with terror at what I had done. I was rooted to the ground. But only for a moment. Remorse, for once, made me self-possessed. I remembered that I had salt in the cabin. I got some, mixed it with water, and poured it down his throat. It had the desired effect, soon relieving him of the poisonous dose he had swallowed.

"Ah! you have saved my papa's life!" cried the young lady, pressing my trembling hand.

"Saved it!" growled old Cresus, as he sat up and glared about. "Let him alone, Imogen! He tried to poison and murder me, so as to rob me after I was dead, and keep you prisoner, my pet. The scoundrel!"

"It was all a mistake--a wretched mistake!" I murmured.

He wouldn't believe me; but he was too ill to get up, as he wanted. I tried to make him more comfortable by a.s.sisting him to a seat on my keg of blasting powder.

As he began to revive a little, he drew a cigar from his pocket, and asked me if I had a match. I had none; but there was a small fire under my frying-pan, and I brought him a coal on a chip. Miss Imogen, when she saw the coal on the chip, began to laugh again. That embarra.s.sed me. My nerves were already unstrung, and my trembling fingers unfortunately spilled the burning ember just as the old gentleman was about to stoop over it with his cigar. It fell between his knees, onto the head of the keg, rolled over, and dropped plumb through the bung-hole onto the giant-powder inside.

This cured me of my bashfulness for some time, as it was over a week before I came to my senses.

CHAPTER XV.

HE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH A CHICAGO WIDOW.

I came to my senses in one of the bedrooms of the Shantytown Hotel.

There was only a part.i.tion between that and the other bedrooms of brown cotton cloth, and as I slowly became conscious of things about me, I heard two voices beyond the next curtain talking of my affairs.

"I reckon he won't know where the time's gone to when he comes to himself ag'in. Lucky for him he didn't go up, like the old gentleman, in such small pieces as to never come down. I don't see, fur the life of me, what purvented. He was standin' right over the kag on which the old chap sot. Marakalous escape, that of the young lady. Beats everything."

"You bet, pardner, 'twouldn't happen so once in a thousand times. You see, she was jist blowed over the ledge an' rolled down twenty or thirty feet, an' brought up on a soft spot--wa'n't hurt a particle.

But how she does take on about her pop! S'pose you knew her brother's come on fur her?"

"No."

"Yes; got here by the noon stage. They're reckoning to leave Shantytown immegitly. Less go down and see 'em off!"

They shuffled away.

I don't know whether my head ached, but I know my heart did. I was a murderer. Or, if not quite so bad as a deliberate murderer, I was, at the very least, guilty of manslaughter. And why? Because I had not been able to overcome my wicked weakness. I felt sick of life, of everything--especially of the mines.

"I can never return to the scene of the accident," I thought.

I groaned and tossed, but it was the torture of my conscience, and not of my aching limbs. The doctor and others came in.

"How long shall I have to lie here?" I asked.

"Not many days; no bones are broken. Your head is injured and you are badly bruised, that's all. You must keep quiet--you must not excite yourself."

Excite myself! As if I could, for one moment, forget the respectable old capitalist whom I had first poisoned and then blown into ten thousand pieces through my folly. I had brain fever. It set in that night. For two weeks I raved deliriously; for two weeks I was doing the things I ought not to have done--in imagination. I took a young lady skating, and slipped down with her on the ice, and broke her Grecian nose. I went to a grand reception, and tore the point lace flounce off of Mrs. Grant's train, put my handkerchief in my saucer, and my coffee-cup in my pocket. I was left to entertain a handsome young lady, and all I could say was to cough and "Hem! hem!" until at last she asked me if I had any particular article I would like hemmed.

I killed a baby by sitting down on it in a fit of embarra.s.sment, when asked by a neighbor to take a seat. I waltzed and waltzed and waltzed with Blue-Eyes, and every time I turned I stepped on her toes with my heavy boots, until they must have been jelly in her little satin slippers, and finally we fell down-stairs, and I went out of that fevered dream only to find myself again giving blazing kerosene to an estimable old gentleman, who swallowed it unsuspiciously, and then sat down on a powder keg, and we all blew up--up--up--and came down--down--b.u.mp! I never want to have brain fever again--at least, not until I have conquered myself.

When I was once more rational, I resolved that a miner's life was too rough for me; and, as soon as I could be bolstered up in a corner of the coach, I set out to reach the railroad, where I was to take a palace-car for home. I gained strength rapidly during the change and excitement of the journey; so that, the day before we were to reach Chicago, I no longer remained p.r.o.ne in my berth, but, "clothed and in my right mind," took my seat with the other pa.s.sengers, looked about and tried to forget the past and to enjoy myself. At first, I had a seat to myself; but, at one of the stations, about two in the afternoon, a lady, dressed in deep black, and wearing a heavy crepe veil, which concealed her face, entered our car, and slipped quietly in to the vacant half of my seat. She sat quite motionless, with her veil down. Every few moments a long, tremulous, heart-broken sigh stirred this sable curtain which shut in my companion's face. I felt a deep sympathy for her, whoever she might be, old or young, pretty or ugly. I inferred that she was a widow; I could hear that she was in affliction; but I was far too diffident to invent any little courteous way of expressing my sympathy. In about half an hour, she put her veil to one side, and asked me, in a low, sweet, pathetic voice, if I had any objection to drawing down the blind, as her veil smothered her, and she had wept so much that her eyes could not bear the strong light of the afternoon sun. I drew down the blind--with such haste as to pinch my fingers cruelly between the sash and the sill.

"Oh, I am _so_ sorry!" said she.

"It's of no consequence," I stammered, making a Toots of myself.

"Oh, but _it is_! and in my service too! Let me be your surgeon, sir,"

and she took from her traveling-bag a small bottle of cologne, with which she drenched a delicate film of black-bordered handkerchief, and then wound the same around my aching fingers. "You are pale," she continued, slightly pressing my hand before releasing it--"ah, how sorry I am!"

"I am pale because I have been ill recently," I responded, conscious that all my becoming pallor was changing to turkey-red.

"Ill?--oh, how sad! What a world of trouble we live in! Ill?--and so young--so hand----. Excuse me, I meant not to flatter you, but I have seen so much sorrow myself. I am only twenty-two, and I've been a wid--wid--wid--ow over a year."

She wiped away a tear with handkerchief No. 2, and smiled sadly in my face.

"Sorrow has aged her," I thought, for, although the blind was down, she looked to me nearer thirty than twenty-two.