CHAPTER VI.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 29, 22 December 1883, Page 4

CHAPTER VI.

Wjijsn* Miss Nellie roachud. tho first mining extension of Indian Spring, which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed hor duster, hid it under a boulder, and, with a few shivers and catlike strokes of her soft hands, not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline de muteness quite inconsistent with any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a certain ring from her third linger which she had put on with her duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the benignant fate which always protected that young person brought her in contact with the Burnham girls at one end of the main street as the returning ! coach to Excelsior entered the , other, and j enabled her to take leave of them before the coach office with a certain ostentation of parting which struck Mr Jack Brace, who was lingering at the doorway, into a 1 state of utter bewilderment. j I Here was Miss Nellie Wynne, the belle ! of Excelsior, calm, quiet, self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as '< fresh as when she had left her father's house ; but where was the woman of the brown duster ? and where the yellow- , dressed apparition of the woods ? He was feebly repeating to himself his mental j adjuration of a few hours before when he ] caught her eye and was taken with a blush and a fit of coughing. Could he have been .such an egregious fool — and was it not plainly written on his embarrassed face for jher to read? "Are we going down together?" asked Miss Nellie, with an exceptionally gracious smile. There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance. The girl had no idea of Brace's suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy desire to placate or deceive a possible rival of Low's prompt her graciousness. She simply wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale excitement of the past two hours, as, she had shaken tho dust lof the woods from her clothes. It was

sharactorisfcic of hevirrosponsiblo naturo and bransiont susnoplibilitios that eh© actually 3njoycd the roliof of change ; moro than that, I feared sho looked upon this infidelity Lo a pa,st dubious ploasuvo as a moral principle. A mild, open flirtation with a recognised man like Brown, after her secret passionate tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an ethical equipoise that soemod propor to ono of her roligious education. Braco was only too happy to profit by Miss Nollio's condescension ; ho at onco secured the scat by her side, and spent the two hours and a-half of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion with hor. If ho did not dare to confoss his past suspicions, ho was oqually afraid to vontui'O upon the boldness ho had promoditatod a few hours beforo. He was thoroforo obliged to take a middlo courso of slightly egotistical narration of his own personal ad venturos, with which he boguilod the young girl's ear, This he only departed from once, to describe to hor a valuable grizzly bear skin which Jio had soon that day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possiblo acceptance of it for a " buggy robe ;" and once to commont upon a ring which she had inadvortoritly disclosed in pulling oil' her glovo. "It's only an old family keepsake," she added with easy mendacity. And nfTocting to recognise in Mr Braeo's curiosity a not unnatural excuse for toying with her charming lingers, sho hid them in chaste and virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover tho ring and resume her glove. A week passed — a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those dry Sierra table lands. The long days were tilled with impalpable dust and acrid haze suspended in tho motionless air ; tho nights were breathless and dewless— tho cold wind which usually swept down from the snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon was pricked with the eating fires of burning lorust crests. The lagging coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior and precipitated its passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excolsior Hotel. As thoy emerged from the coach, Mr Brace, standing in the doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognisable faces. They were the u&unJ type of travellers ; a single professional man in dirty black, a few traders in tweeds and ilanncls, a sprinkling of minors in red and grey shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or muleteer. This lattor for a moment mingled wibii the crowd in the barroom, and eveif ponetratcd tho corridor and diningroom of the hotel, as if impelled by «i certain semi-civilised curiosity, and thenstrolled with a lazy dragging step— half impeded by the enormous leather leggings, chains, and fepui-3 peculiar to that class— down tho main .street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the same childish scrutiny of the dimly - lighted shops, magazines, and saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his- figure could be seen, he seemed to show even more than tho usual concern of masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures about at that hour, or visible at window or verandah, received his marked attention ; he respectfully followed the two auburnhaired daughters of Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church. Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered lie managed to slip in unperceived behind them. The memorial of tho Excelsior gambler's generosity was a modern building, large and pretentious for even Mr Wynns popularity, and had been good-humouredly known in the characteristic language of the genei rous donors as one of the "biggest religious bluhV' on record. Its groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees, and in the rambling chcir with its bafe space for the future organ, the few choristers gathered round a small harmonium were lost in the deepening shadow of that summer evening. Tho muleteer remained hidden in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments desultory conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of Miss Nellie Wynn, their loader, would prevent their practising, the choristers withdrew. Tiie stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a few moments a vague and motionless figuio in the silent church. Then, coming cautiously to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the faint light of the dying day shone in tho black eyes of Teresa ' Despite her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair piled and twisted round her head, the strange dress and boyish figure, one swift glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity. See turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a hymn book. Her eyes became riveted on a name wiittcn on the title page, " Nellie Wyiino." Her name and her book. The instinct that had guided her hero was right ; tho slight gossip jof her fellow passengers was right; this was the clergyman's daughter whose praise filled all mouths. This was the unknown girl tho stranger was seeking, but who in her turn perhaps had been seeking Low— tho girl who absorbed his fancy— tho .secret of his absences, his preoccupation— his coldness ! This was the girl whom to seo _perhaps in his arms— she was now perilling her liberty and life unknown to him. A slight odour, some faint perfume of its owner, came from the book ; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had given her. She flung the volume on the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands. In the light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte abandoned to selfcommunion. But whatever yearning her soul might have had for higher sympathy and deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Rev, Mr Wynne did not meet that requirement. She only felt the dry oven-like heat of that vast shell empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretence and dreary in its desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion and converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of the woodland aisles—so unlike this pillared sham— had taught her own passionate heart, had she but aared. Mingling with this imperfect theology, sho felt she could have proved to him also that a brunette and a woman of hor experience was better than an immature blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hithor, and dreaded to meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her.' What if he had not come here ? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if he should return— if he had already returned ? She rose to her feet, whitening, yet joyful with the thought. ' She would return ab once— what was the girl to her now? Yet there

was time to satisfy hovsolf if ho wore at her house Sho hart beon told where it was : sho could find it in tho dark : an open door or window would botray somo sign or sound of the oocupants. Sho voso, replaced her hat 'ovev her oyes, knotted hoi* Haunting scarf around her throat, groped hor way to the door, and glided into the outer darkness,