"Mought I ax your name, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Sharpe.

"Marian Kingsley," was the faint reply.

"Miss or Mrs., ma'am?" pursued Mrs. Sharpe, glancing at the shapely, white, ringless hands.

The stranger gave a slight impatient twitch. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Call me Marian. That will do as well as anything."

Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the cla.s.s to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries.

"Came from 'Frisco?"

"I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place."

"Whar _did_ yer come from?"

"Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way.

More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered that Marian had a little money--enough to pay her board for a few months--and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer."

Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew something of Jim.

"_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git no 'Courting' from _we_."

Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers,"

she said. "I wanted to be sure."

Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.

"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur weeks at a time."

Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her beautiful face.

"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.

Marian nodded.

"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita.

Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."

In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared, escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the presence of "the ladies."

"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to, and them of mine wus about dead beat."

Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circ.u.mlocutions, and profane epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his power in regard to the man she had come to find.

No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral part of the city of "b.u.t.terflies." The b.u.t.terflies, by the by, for which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but "Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.

Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above him.

There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story: that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt, which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word; disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her the reason why.

Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room, not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand.

If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever.

The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in it one night."

At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard.

When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less wonderful than now.

"Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his freezing to death?"

"I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell nothin' whatsomd-ever!"

This, with a glance half pitying, half rea.s.suring, as though he would promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe.

One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!"

She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner"

was like.

"He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"

Scotty, thus appealed to, gave a profane a.s.sent. He had scarcely moved a muscle since he sat down, with his eyes fixed on Marian's fair, ever-changing face. Mrs. Sharpe, after a vain attempt to engage him in conversation, had quietly withdrawn, having no relish for being one of a quartette where two did all the talking.

"Was he--an--educated man?" inquired Marian hesitatingly, feeling in a vague way that the question might offend Jack.

"Yes, he war," replied that worthy in a contemplative tone. "When he war drunk I hev hearn him talkin' a lot of stuff like po'try. Thar's a pile of books in my cabin now that he used ter read consid'able. _I_ can't make head nor tail to 'em. P'r'aps you might."

"I would like to see them," said Marian eagerly.

Jack nodded, and a pause ensued. At length Scotty remarked that the "old man," meaning Cutey, was "reyther late in lightin' up," at which Jack arose and bade the stranger "good night."

Marian put out her hand, saying, "We will be good friends, I hope."

Circus Jack took it by the finger tips cautiously, careful not to hurt it with his h.o.r.n.y fingers.

"I'll do ary thing in the world fur yer, madam," he replied earnestly and ingenuously.

"There was one thing I wished to ask," she said, "though it may be a foolish question. Did you ever notice any--ring--that he wore or--carried?"

"They _wus_ a ring, but I'm beat ef I kin tell what kind. Once when Jim was turrible sick, an' his hand swelled up, I wanted to file it off, but he fought so I couldn't. He said when he got well thet it never had ben off, nor never shouldn't be while he had life to fight."

"Can't you tell me what it was like?" she asked.

"I ain't no hand," said Circus Jack, rubbing his head. "I'd know it ef I seed it, but----"

"Was it like this?" She drew a dainty purse from her pocket, and took from its safest corner a plain, flat band of gold, with a small disk on it, shaped like the half of a heart placed horizontally.