“You can hold me,” she replied simply, with a superbly unconscious lifting of her arm, as she yielded her waist to him again, but without raising her eyes.

He did,—holding her rather tightly, I fear, as they clambered up the remaining slope, for it seemed to him as a last embrace. As he lifted her to the road bank, the shouts came nearer; and glancing up, he saw two men and a woman running down the hill toward them. He turned to Eugenia. In that instant she had slipped the tattered dust-coat from her shoulder, thrown it over her arm, set her hat straight, and was calmly awaiting them with a self-possession and coolness that seemed to shame their excitement. He noticed, too, with the quick perception of unimportant things which comes to some natures at such moments, that she had plucked a sprig of wild myrtle from the mountain side, and was wearing it on her breast.

“Goodness Heavens! Genie! What has happened! Where have you been?”

“Eugenia! this is perfect madness!” began the elder man didactically. “You have alarmed us beyond measure—kept the stage waiting, and now it is gone!”

“Genie! Look here, I say! We’ve been hunting for you everywhere. What’s up?” said the younger man, with brotherly brusqueness.

As these questions were all uttered in the same breath, Eugenia replied to them collectively. “It was so hot that I kept along the bank here, while you were on the other side. I heard the trickle of water somewhere down there, and searching for it my foot slipped. This gentleman”—she indicated Bray—“was on a little sort of a trail there, and assisted me back to the road again.”

The two men and the woman turned and stared at Bray with a look of curiosity that changed quickly into a half contemptuous unconcern. They saw a youngish sort of man, with a long mustache, a two days’ growth of beard, a not overclean face, that was further streaked with red on the temple, a torn flannel shirt, that showed a very white shoulder beside a sunburnt throat and neck, and soiled white trousers stuck into muddy high boots—in fact, the picture of a broken-down miner. But their unconcern was as speedily changed again into resentment at the perfect ease and equality with which he regarded them, a regard the more exasperating as it was not without a suspicion of his perception of some satire or humor in the situation.

“Ahem! very much obliged, I am sure. I—er”—

“The lady has thanked me,” interrupted Bray, with a smile.

“Did you fall far?” said the younger man to Eugenia, ignoring Bray.

“Not far,” she answered, with a half appealing look at Bray.

“Only a few feet,” added the latter, with prompt mendacity, “just a little slip down.”

The three new-comers here turned away, and, surrounding Eugenia, conversed in an undertone. Quite conscious that he was the subject of discussion, Bray lingered only in the hope of catching a parting glance from Eugenia. The words “YOU do it,” “No, YOU!” “It would come better from HER,” were distinctly audible to him. To his surprise, however, she suddenly broke through them, and advancing to him, with a dangerous brightness in her beautiful eyes, held out her slim hand. “My father, Mr. Neworth, my brother, Harry Neworth, and my aunt, Mrs. Dobbs,” she said, indicating each one with a graceful inclination of her handsome head, “all think I ought to give you something and send you away. I believe that is the way they put it. I think differently! I come to ask you to let me once more thank you for your good service to me to-day—which I shall never forget.” When he had returned her firm handclasp for a minute, she coolly rejoined the discomfited group.

“She’s no sardine,” said Bray to himself emphatically, “but I suspect she’ll catch it from her folks for this. I ought to have gone away at once, like a gentleman, hang it!”

He was even angrily debating with himself whether he ought not to follow her to protect her from her gesticulating relations as they all trailed up the hill with her, when he reflected that it would only make matters worse. And with it came the dreadful reflection that as yet he had not carried the water to his expecting and thirsty comrades. He had forgotten them for these lazy, snobbish, purse-proud San Franciscans—for Bray had the miner’s supreme contempt for the moneyed trading classes. What would the boys think of him! He flung himself over the bank, and hastened recklessly down the trail to the spring. But here again he lingered—the place had become suddenly hallowed. How deserted it looked without her! He gazed eagerly around on the ledge for any trace that she had left—a bow, a bit of ribbon, or even a hairpin that had fallen from her.

As the young man slowly filled the pail he caught sight of his own reflection in the spring. It certainly was not that of an Adonis! He laughed honestly; his sense of humor had saved him from many an extravagance, and mitigated many a disappointment before this. Well! She was a plucky, handsome girl—even if she was not for him, and he might never set eyes on her again. Yet it was a hard pull up that trail once more, carrying an insensible pail of water in the hand that had once sustained a lovely girl! He remembered her reply to his badinage, “Of course not—if it were only a pail,” and found a dozen pretty interpretations of it. Yet he was not in love! No! He was too poor and too level headed for that! And he was unaffectedly and materially tired, too, when he reached the road again, and rested, leaving the spring and its little idyl behind.

By this time the sun had left the burning ledge of the Eureka Company, and the stage road was also in shadow, so that his return through its heavy dust was less difficult. And when he at last reached the camp, he found to his relief that his prolonged absence had been overlooked by his thirsty companions in a larger excitement and disappointment; for it appeared that a well-known San Francisco capitalist, whom the foreman had persuaded to visit their claim with a view to advance and investment, had actually come over from Red Dog for that purpose, and had got as far as the summit when he was stopped by an accident, and delayed so long that he was obliged to go on to Sacramento without making his examination.

“That was only his excuse—mere flap-doodle!” interrupted the pessimistic Jerrold. “He was foolin’ you; he’d heard of suthin better! The idea of calling that affair an ‘accident,’ or one that would stop any man who meant business!”

Bray had become uneasily conscious. “What was the accident?” he asked.

“A d–d fool woman’s accident,” broke in the misogynist Parkhurst, “and it’s true! That’s what makes it so cussed mean. For there’s allus a woman at the bottom of such things—bet your life! Think of ‘em comin’ here. Thar ought to be a law agin it.”

“But what was it?” persisted Bray, becoming more apprehensive.

“Why, what does that blasted fool of a capitalist do but bring with him his daughter and auntie to ‘see the wonderful scenery with popa dear!’ as if it was a cheap Sunday-school panorama! And what do these chuckle-headed women do but get off the coach and go to wanderin’ about, and playin’ ‘here we go round the mulberry bush’ until one of ‘em tumbles down a ravine. And then there’s a great to do! and ‘dear popa’ was up and down the road yellin’ ‘Me cheyld! me cheyld!’ And then there was camphor and sal volatile and eau de cologne to be got, and the coach goes off, and ‘popa dear’ gets left, and then has to hurry off in a buggy to catch it. So WE get left too, just because that God-forsaken fool, Neworth, brings his women here.”

Under this recital poor Bray sat as completely crushed as when the fair daughter of Neworth had descended upon his shoulders at the spring. He saw it all! HIS was the fault. It was HIS delay and dalliance with her that had checked Neworth’s visit; worse than that, it was his subsequent audacity and her defense of him that would probably prevent any renewal of the negotiations. He had shipwrecked his partners’ prospects in his absurd vanity and pride! He did not dare to raise his eyes to their dejected faces. He would have confessed everything to them, but the same feeling of delicacy for her which had determined him to keep her adventures to himself now forever sealed his lips. How might they not misconstrue his conduct—and HERS! Perhaps something of this was visible in his face.

“Come, old man,” said the cheerful misogynist, with perfect innocence, “don’t take it so hard. Some time in a man’s life a woman’s sure to get the drop on him, as I said afore, and this yer woman’s got the drop on five of us! But—hallo, Ned, old man—what’s the matter with your head?” He laid his hand gently on the matted temple of his younger partner.

“I had—a slip—on the trail,” he stammered. “Had to go back again for another pailful. That’s what delayed me, you know, boys,” he added. “But it’s nothing!”

“Nothing!” ejaculated Parkhurst, clapping him on the back and twisting him around by the shoulders so that he faced his companions. “Nothing! Look at him, gentlemen; and he says it’s ‘nothing.’ That’s how a MAN takes it! HE didn’t go round yellin’ and wringin’ his hands and sayin’ ‘Me pay-l! me pay-l!’ when it spilt! He just humped himself and trotted back for another. And yet every drop of water in that overset bucket meant hard work and hard sweat, and was as precious as gold.”

Luckily for Bray, whose mingled emotions under Parkhurst’s eloquence were beginning to be hysterical, the foreman interrupted.

“Well, boys! it’s time we got to work again, and took another heave at the old ledge! But now that this job of Neworth’s is over—I don’t mind tellin’ ye suthin.” As their leader usually spoke but little, and to the point, the four men gathered around him. “Although I engineered this affair, and got it up, somehow, I never SAW that Neworth standing on this ledge! No, boys! I never saw him HERE.” The look of superstition which Bray and the others had often seen on this old miner’s face, and which so often showed itself in his acts, was there. “And though I wanted him to come, and allowed to have him come, I’m kinder relieved that he didn’t, and so let whatsoever luck’s in the air come to us five alone, boys, just as we stand.”

The next morning Bray was up before his companions, and although it was not his turn, offered to bring water from the spring. He was not in love with Eugenia—he had not forgotten his remorse of the previous day—but he would like to go there once more before he relentlessly wiped out her image from his mind. And he had heard that although Neworth had gone on to Sacramento, his son and the two ladies had stopped on for a day or two at the ditch superintendent’s house on the summit, only two miles away. She might pass on the road; he might get a glimpse of her again and a wave of her hand before this thing was over forever, and he should have to take up the daily routine of his work again. It was not love—of THAT he was assured—but it was the way to stop it by convincing himself of its madness. Besides, in view of all the circumstances, it was his duty as a gentleman to show some concern for her condition after the accident and the disagreeable contretemps which followed it.

Thus Bray! Alas, none of these possibilities occurred. He found the spring had simply lapsed into its previous unsuggestive obscurity,—a mere niche in the mountain side that held only—water! The stage road was deserted save for an early, curly-headed schoolboy, whom he found lurking on the bank, but who evaded his company and conversation. He returned to the camp quite cured of his fancy. His late zeal as a water-carrier had earned him a day or two’s exemption from that duty. His place was taken the next afternoon by the woman-hating Parkhurst, and he was the less concerned by it as he had heard that the same afternoon the ladies were to leave the summit for Sacramento.

But then occurred a singular coincidence. The new water-bringer was as scandalously late in his delivery of the precious fluid as his predecessor! An hour passed and he did not return. His unfortunate partners, toiling away with pick and crowbar on the burning ledge, were clamorous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. It could not be possible that Eugenia’s accident had been repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! she was already gone. The mystery was presently cleared, however, by the abrupt appearance of Parkhurst running towards them, but WITHOUT HIS PAIL! The cry of consternation and despair which greeted that discovery was, however, quickly changed by a single breathless, half intelligible sentence he had shot before him from his panting lips. And he was holding something in his outstretched palm that was more eloquent than words. Gold!

In an instant they had him under the shade of the pine-tree, and were squatting round him like schoolboys. He was profoundly agitated. His story, far from being brief, was incoherent and at times seemed irrelevant, but that was characteristic. They would remember that he had always held the theory that, even in quartz mining, the deposits were always found near water, past or present, with signs of fluvial erosion! He didn’t call himself one of your blanked scientific miners, but his head was level! It was all very well for them to say “Yes, yes!” NOW, but they didn’t use to! Well! when he got to the spring, he noticed that there had been a kind of landslide above it, of course, from water cleavage, and there was a distinct mark of it on the mountain side, where it had uprooted and thrown over some small bushes!

Excited as Bray was, he recognized with a hysterical sensation the track made by Eugenia in her fall, which he himself had noticed. But he had thought only of HER.

“When I saw that,” continued Parkhurst, more rapidly and coherently, “I saw that there was a crack above the hole where the water came through—as if it had been the old channel of the spring. I widened it a little with my clasp knife, and then—in a little pouch or pocket of decomposed quartz—I found that! Not only that, boys,” he continued, rising, with a shout, “but the whole slope above the spring is a mass of seepage underneath, as if you’d played a hydraulic hose on it, and it’s ready to tumble and is just rotten with quartz!”

The men leaped to their feet; in another moment they had snatched picks, pans, and shovels, and, the foreman leading, with a coil of rope thrown over his shoulders, were all flying down the trail to the highway. Their haste was wise. The spring was not on THEIR claim; it was known to others; it was doubtful if Parkhurst’s discovery with his knife amounted to actual WORK on the soil. They must “take it up” with a formal notice, and get to work at once!

In an hour they were scattered over the mountain side, like bees clinging to the fragrant slope of laurel and myrtle above the spring. An excavation was made beside it, and the ledge broadened by a dozen feet. Even the spring itself was utilized to wash the hastily filled prospecting pans. And when the Pioneer Coach slowly toiled up the road that afternoon, the passengers stared at the scarcely dry “Notice of Location” pinned to the pine by the road bank, whence Eugenia had fallen two days before!

Eagerly and anxiously as Edward Bray worked with his companions, it was with more conflicting feelings. There was a certain sense of desecration in their act. How her proud lip would have curled had she seen him—he who but a few hours before would have searched the whole slope for the treasure of a ribbon, a handkerchief, or a bow from her dress—now delving and picking the hillside for that fortune her accident had so mysteriously disclosed. Mysteriously he believed, for he had not fully accepted Parkhurst’s story. That gentle misogynist had never been an active prospector; an inclination to theorize without practice and to combat his partners’ experience were all against his alleged process of discovery, although the gold was actually there; and his conduct that afternoon was certainly peculiar. He did but little of the real work; but wandered from man to man, with suggestions, advice, and exhortations, and the air of a superior patron. This might have been characteristic, but mingled with it was a certain nervous anxiety and watchfulness. He was continually scanning the stage road and the trail, staring eagerly at any wayfarer in the distance, and at times falling into fits of strange abstraction. At other times he would draw near to one of his fellow partners, as if for confidential disclosure, and then check himself and wander aimlessly away. And it was not until evening came that the mystery was solved.

The prospecting pans had been duly washed and examined, the slope above and below had been fully explored and tested, with a result and promise that outran their most sanguine hopes. There was no mistaking the fact that they had made a “big” strike. That singular gravity and reticence, so often observed in miners at these crises, had come over them as they sat that night for the last time around their old camp-fire on the Eureka ledge, when Parkhurst turned impulsively to Bray. “Roll over here,” he said in a whisper. “I want to tell ye suthin!”

Bray “rolled” beyond the squatting circle, and the two men gradually edged themselves out of hearing of the others. In the silent abstraction that prevailed nobody noticed them.

“It’s got suthin to do with this discovery,” said Parkhurst, in a low, mysterious tone, “but as far as the gold goes, and our equal rights to it as partners, it don’t affect them. If I,” he continued in a slightly patronizing, paternal tone, “choose to make you and the other boys sharers in what seems to be a special Providence to ME, I reckon we won’t quarrel on it. It’s a mighty curious, singular thing. It’s one of those things ye read about in books and don’t take any stock in! But we’ve got the gold—and I’ve got the black and white to prove it—even if it ain’t exactly human.”

His voice sank so low, his manner was so impressive, that despite his known exaggeration, Bray felt a slight thrill of superstition. Meantime Parkhurst wiped his brow, took a folded slip of paper and a sprig of laurel from his pocket, and drew a long breath.

“When I got to the spring this afternoon,” he went on, in a nervous, tremulous, and scarcely audible voice, “I saw this bit o’ paper, folded note-wise, lyin’ on the ledge before it. On top of it was this sprig of laurel, to catch the eye. I ain’t the man to pry into other folks’ secrets, or read what ain’t mine. But on the back o’ this note was written ‘To Jack!’ It’s a common enough name, but it’s a singular thing, ef you’ll recollect, thar ain’t ANOTHER Jack in this company, not on the whole ridge betwixt this and the summit, except MYSELF! So I opened it, and this is what it read!” He held the paper sideways toward the leaping light of the still near camp-fire, and read slowly, with the emphasis of having read it many times before.

“‘I want you to believe that I, at least, respect and honor your honest, manly calling, and when you strike it rich, as you surely will, I hope you will sometimes think of Jill.’”

In the thrill of joy, hope, and fear that came over Bray, he could see that Parkhurst had not only failed to detect his secret, but had not even connected the two names with their obvious suggestion. “But do you know anybody named Jill?” he asked breathlessly.

“It’s no NAME,” said Parkhurst in a sombre voice, “it’s a THING!”

“A thing?” repeated Bray, bewildered.

“Yes, a measure—you know—two fingers of whiskey.”

“Oh, a ‘gill,’” said Bray.

“That’s what I said, young man,” returned Parkhurst gravely.

Bray choked back a hysterical laugh; spelling was notoriously not one of Parkhurst’s strong points. “But what has a ‘gill’ got to do with it?” he asked quickly.

“It’s one of them Sphinx things, don’t you see? A sort of riddle or rebus, you know. You’ve got to study it out, as them old chaps did. But I fetched it. What comes after ‘gills,’ eh?”

“Pints, I suppose,” said Bray.

“And after pints?”

“Quarts.”

“QUARTZ, and there you are. So I looked about me for quartz, and sure enough struck it the first pop.”

Bray cast a quick look at Parkhurst’s grave face. The man was evidently impressed and sincere. “Have you told this to any one?” he asked quickly.

“No.”

“Then DON’T! or you’ll spoil the charm, and bring us ill luck! That’s the rule, you know. I really don’t know that you ought to have told me,” added the artful Bray, dissembling his intense joy at this proof of Eugenia’s remembrance.

“But,” said Parkhurst blankly, “you see, old man, you’d been the last man at the spring, and I kinder thought”—

“Don’t think,” said Bray promptly, “and above all, don’t talk; not a word to the boys of this. Stay! Give me the paper and the sprig. I’ve got to go to San Francisco next week, and I’ll take care of it and think it out!” He knew that Parkhurst might be tempted to talk, but without the paper his story would be treated lightly. Parkhurst handed him the paper, and the two men returned to the camp-fire.

That night Bray slept but little. The superstition of the lover is no less keen than that of the gambler, and Bray, while laughing at Parkhurst’s extravagant fancy, I am afraid was equally inclined to believe that their good fortune came through Eugenia’s influence. At least he should tell her so, and her precious note became now an invitation as well as an excuse for seeking her. The only fear that possessed him was that she might have expected some acknowledgment of her note before she left that afternoon; the only thing he could not understand was how she had managed to convey the note to the spring, for she could not have taken it herself. But this would doubtless be explained by her in San Francisco, whither he intended to seek her. His affairs, the purchasing of machinery for their new claim, would no doubt give him easy access to her father.

But it was one thing to imagine this while procuring a new and fashionable outfit in San Francisco, and quite another to stand before the “palatial” residence of the Neworths on Rincon Hill, with the consciousness of no other introduction than the memory of the Neworths’ discourtesy on the mountain, and, even in his fine feathers, Bray hesitated. At this moment a carriage rolled up to the door, and Eugenia, an adorable vision of laces and silks, alighted.

Forgetting everything else, he advanced toward her with outstretched hand. He saw her start, a faint color come into her face; he knew he was recognized; but she stiffened quickly again, the color vanished, her beautiful gray eyes rested coldly on him for a moment, and then, with the faintest inclination of her proud head, she swept by him and entered the house.

But Bray, though shocked, was not daunted, and perhaps his own pride was awakened. He ran to his hotel, summoned a messenger, inclosed her note in an envelope, and added these lines:—

DEAR MISS NEWORTH,—I only wanted to thank you an hour ago, as I should like to have done before, for the kind note which I inclose, but which you have made me feel I have no right to treasure any longer, and to tell you that your most generous wish and prophecy has been more than fulfilled.

Yours, very gratefully,

EDMUND BRAY.

Within the hour the messenger returned with the still briefer reply:—

“Miss Neworth has been fully aware of that preoccupation with his good fortune which prevented Mr. Bray from an earlier acknowledgment of her foolish note.”

Cold as this response was, Bray’s heart leaped. She HAD lingered on the summit, and HAD expected a reply. He seized his hat, and, jumping into the first cab at the hotel door, drove rapidly back to the house. He had but one idea, to see her at any cost, but one concern, to avoid a meeting with her father first, or a denial at her very door.

He dismissed the cab at the street corner and began to reconnoitre the house. It had a large garden in the rear, reclaimed from the adjacent “scrub oak” infested sand hill, and protected by a high wall. If he could scale that wall, he could command the premises. It was a bright morning; she might be tempted into the garden. A taller scrub oak grew near the wall; to the mountain-bred Bray it was an easy matter to swing himself from it to the wall, and he did. But his momentum was so great that he touched the wall only to be obliged to leap down into the garden to save himself from falling there. He heard a little cry, felt his feet strike some tin utensil, and rolled on the ground beside Eugenia and her overturned watering-pot.

They both struggled to their feet with an astonishment that turned to laughter in their eyes and the same thought in the minds of each.

“But we are not on the mountains now, Mr. Bray,” said Eugenia, taking her handkerchief at last from her sobering face and straightening eyebrows.

“But we are quits,” said Bray. “And you now know my real name. I only came here to tell you why I could not answer your letter the same day. I never got it—I mean,” he added hurriedly, “another man got it first.”

She threw up her head, and her face grew pale. “ANOTHER man got it,” she repeated, “and YOU let another man”—

“No, no,” interrupted Bray imploringly. “You don’t understand. One of my partners went to the spring that afternoon, and found it; but he neither knows who sent it, nor for whom it was intended.” He hastily recounted Parkhurst’s story, his mysterious belief, and his interpretation of the note. The color came back to her face and the smile to her lips and eyes. “I had gone twice to the spring after I saw you, but I couldn’t bear its deserted look without you,” he added boldly. Here, seeing her face grew grave again, he added, “But how did you get the letter to the spring? and how did you know that it was found that day?”

It was her turn to look embarrassed and entreating, but the combination was charming in her proud face. “I got the little schoolboy at the summit,” she said, with girlish hesitation, “to take the note. He knew the spring, but he didn’t know YOU. I told him—it was very foolish, I know—to wait until you came for water, to be certain that you got the note, to wait until you came up, for I thought you might question him, or give him some word.” Her face was quite rosy now. “But,” she added, and her lip took a divine pout, “he said he waited TWO HOURS; that you never took the LEAST CONCERN of the letter or him, but went around the mountain side, peering and picking in every hole and corner of it, and then he got tired and ran away. Of course I understand it now, it wasn’t YOU; but oh, please; I beg you, Mr. Bray, don’t!”

Bray released the little hand which he had impulsively caught, and which had allowed itself to be detained for a blissful moment.

“And now, don’t you think, Mr. Bray,” she added demurely, “that you had better let me fill my pail again while you go round to the front door and call upon me properly?”

“But your father”—

“My father, as a well-known investor, regrets exceedingly that he did not make your acquaintance more thoroughly in his late brief interview. He is, as your foreman knows, exceedingly interested in the mines on Eureka ledge. He will be glad if you will call.” She led him to a little door in the wall, which she unbolted. “And now ‘Jill’ must say good-by to ‘Jack,’ for she must make herself ready to receive a Mr. Bray who is expected.”

And when Bray a little later called at the front door, he was respectfully announced. He called another day, and many days after. He came frequently to San Francisco, and one day did not return to his old partners. He had entered into a new partnership with one who he declared “had made the first strike on Eureka mountain.”