Chapter I: Part 1

The Black Cat

January 1896.

Contents

=In Solomon’s Caverns.= Charles Edward Barns.
=An Angel of Tenderfoot Hill.= Frederick Bradford.
=In Miggles’ Alley.= Herman Brownson.
=The Missing Link.= James Buckham.
=Unchallenged.= Katharine Morrow.
=Aidu.= Hero Despard.
=Mrs. Emory’s Boarder.= C. Marie Mott.

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The Black Cat

A Monthly Magazine of Original Short Stories.

No. 4. JANUARY, 1896. 5 cents a copy,
50 cents a year.

Entered at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class matter.

=IMPORTANT.=—The entire contents of this magazine are covered
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Copyright, 1895, by the Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights
reserved.

In Solomon’s Caverns.

BY CHARLES EDWARD BARNS.

Three men stood in the doorway of the Bohemian Club, that meeting-place of men of the world from all over the world. It was the hour of noon, when the human tide in this busy quarter of San Francisco is at its height. Just as the party was about to separate, their way was temporarily blocked by a squad of policemen, who escorted a score or more of Chinamen handcuffed in pairs.

“What’s up?” asked one of the club-men.

“Opium smuggling,” replied the police captain.

“Speaking of opium,” said another of the trio, turning to his companions, “reminds me of an experience that befell a traveler in the Holy Land, an experience in which opium saved a man’s life.”

“Tell us about it.”

“It’s too long a story for the sidewalk, but if you will step upstairs and join me in a dish of frijoles, with etceteras, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“It happened in the ancient city of Jerusalem,” said the speaker, after they were seated in the Bohemian’s dining-room, whose walls bore picturesque record of many a “High and Low Jinks” in the club’s history. “Not many people know that the famous walled hamlet stands on a shell of rock; in other words, that there is a series of wonderful caverns extending for some miles in an intricate chain underneath the city, and that a little hole near the Golden Gate of the Holy Land, barely large enough to admit a man, is the only entrance and exit. These caverns, unlike the caves of Kentucky, were made by man. The stones which came from them were used in the building of Solomon’s Temple, just one thousand years before Christ. The old king employed eighty thousand men to cut out these stones, forty thousand working by day and as many by night, so you see that there must have been plenty of elbow room, and you can judge of the vastness of the present caverns. You remember the passage in 1 Kings,—that in the building of the temple ‘there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard.’

“One lovely spring morning, this man I’m telling about, who had a passion for out-of-the-way adventures, started for these caverns with a trusty dragoman guide, his mind bent on exploring the subterranean chambers further than had any one before him. In fact, he had a secret idea that he might discover a passage leading to the cavern under the pool of Siloam on the other side of the city; but this plan he kept to himself until he had reached the caverns, and spent an hour or more studying the marks left by the tools of Solomon’s workmen. When he finally revealed his scheme, the dragoman combated with the greatest vehemence an undertaking that, he said, might cost them their lives.

“Not at all affected by this dismal prophecy, which, in fact, added a certain relish to the adventure, the explorer took accurate bearings, and pressed on to what appeared to be the lowest spot in the whole series of caverns. Here, to his amazement, his guide sat down and absolutely refused to go farther. It was useless for his master to attempt to urge him on by the assurance that they could not be far from the south wall, where he hoped to find a connecting passage to the pool of Siloam. The old chap sat immovable, declaring that to go farther, provided as they were with but two torches and little food, meant certain death. He even appealed to Allah to restore his master to reason.

“But, guide or no guide, the explorer was determined to hang on to his project as a dog does to a bone. A few yards away rose a huge ledge that promised a better view of the caverns’ unexplored depths. Directing the dragoman to remain where he was seated and to answer whenever he heard his master’s call, he picked up his staff and started toward the ledge, promising that if he could find no outlet without going beyond calling distance he would give up his search. Once on his way to the ledge the man stopped, and, looking back to make sure that the dragoman understood his instruction, saw the old fellow sitting just as he had left him, the staff of his torch supported by his breast, so that the light shone full upon him, while his hands, which were thus left free, were rolling a cigarette, breaking an opium pill and sprinkling it into the tobacco, as was his custom. With a loud cry, which the guide returned in a deep guttural that resounded in a decidedly ghostly fashion in the grim caverns, the man passed on, lighted now only by the flame of his own torch. No sooner had he reached the high ledge than, seeing another still higher, farther on, he started for that, calling each moment, and as often hearing the sound of encouragement ever further and further away. Suddenly the answer, ‘Aiya!’ rose to a shrill scream, like that of a wounded animal. Instinctively he turned back, and called again. There was no answer. Another and yet another cry echoed vainly down the grim caverns. Seized with dread of some awful catastrophe, he rushed back the way he had come. When finally he reached his starting point he found, to his amazement, that the dragoman’s lamp was out; but by the light of his own he could see the man still sitting there in the hollow where he had left him, upright and motionless. Again he spoke, and again. The man made no reply. Then, thrusting his torch forward, he caught his first glimpse of the guide’s face, and stood rigid with terror. The bronze countenance was of a deathly pallor; the mouth was drawn as in agony, and the eyes were wide open,—so wide that the whites glowed through the darkness like phosphorescent globes. At the first touch the man fell heavily backward. As his master bent, attempting to raise the body, he saw, to his amazement, the torch, which he had laid aside, flicker and die. Then he understood. They were in a lake of deadly gas, which, being heavier than the air, had settled to the bottom of the cave. He groped for his torch, found it, and lighted it again, testing the lake of deadly carbon. Soon he found that if he lowered the light below his hips, when standing erect, it would go out. Thus he was half submerged in a lake of death, where he was safe only as long as he stood upright. Malook had seated himself, hence was literally drowned. Drawing a deep breath and holding it, he stooped and placed his hand on the guide’s heart. The action made him doubly sure of the deadly nature of the gas. The heart was still, and his own almost ceased beating in the brief moment spent in the suffocating carbon. But, even in the presence of death and danger, the instinct of self-preservation did not fail him. In a moment he had possessed himself of the dead man’s torch, his knapsack and luncheon, and his staff, and then, sacrilege though it seemed, he rifled his pockets. Here he found only tobacco and a box containing about a hundred little pellets of opium. These last he was about to put back, but, missing the pocket, he thrust the box into his own, and hurried to a higher and safer place. Once there, he set himself to puzzling out his next course of action. To make his way back to the entrance of the cave after these miles of wandering would be impossible. He had trusted his guide too implicitly for that. His only hope was to reach the pool of Siloam, which he was still doggedly convinced was not far away, although of a passage through there was no record. With this idea he started out once more, wandering aimlessly first this way and then that, finally bringing up, faint and exhausted, by the side of a body of still water. Grateful for this discovery, he scooped a little into his hands, bathed his hot head, and, as he was hungry, took a few mouthfuls of food. Finally, in the face of danger, just as has been told of famous generals in the thick of battle, he sat down and rolled a cigarette. The food and the tobacco, topped by a strong pull at his brandy flask, renewed his courage, and he set himself once more to reviewing the situation. From his extreme fatigue, he felt convinced that he had wandered miles. His legs ached as they never had before, and this, too, although he was accustomed to the severest mountain climbing. Looking at his watch, he was surprised to find that it was night in the world beyond and above him. Satisfied that even if he came near the passage to the pool the darkness would deceive him, he resolved to rest where he was until daybreak. An inventory of his supplies convinced him that he might fight off starvation for three days, but that at the extreme limit. Possessed by these frightful thoughts, he lay back, and, overcome by fatigue, soon fell into a slumber troubled by the most horrible dreams. In the midst of one of these nightmares he awoke with a scream, which resounded appallingly. The sense of desolation was almost unbearable. Indeed, if his torch had not been lighted, he would certainly have lost his reason. He knew that madness often preceded death under such circumstances, and in his desperation resolved that at the first signs of a failing mind he would put an end to his existence with his revolver. The case was desperate. Oil and food were low; above him stretched a crust of rock from forty to one hundred feet thick, through which no sound or ray of light from the outer world could penetrate. As a test of his courage, he put out his torch, but found that he could not endure the torture for long, though he resolved to inure himself to the strain of the intense darkness and silence, at any cost. Oil was now as precious as blood drops.

“When at last his watch told him that the night had worn away, he took another morsel of food and a sip of brandy, rose, and started out again, keeping close to the pool. As he walked, he heard a slight sound, like that made by a leaping fish. Here, at last, was a chance to test his theory. If that fish had eyes, then this cavern lake connected with the pool of Siloam. If not—At the end of a full hour spent in searching for the fish he finally caught the squirming thing in his hands, and brought it to the light. It was eyeless! In his rage the man flung the ugly thing back into the water. A moment later, however, the thought of the poverty of his supplies sent him groping on hands and knees for the object of his wrath, which he killed and cleaned, storing it away in his bag. He even bagged a huge bat that, frightened by his torch, flew so near that he brought it down with his staff, saving it as carefully as if it had been a chicken. For all that he knew, its few drops of blood might be the means of preserving his life.

“For three days and nights he wandered away from that pool, each time, however, bringing up there again, as though propelled by fate. Fortunately it was impossible for him to find his way back to the guide’s body; that visible presence of death would undoubtedly have extinguished the last spark of his own life. As it was, with each hour he felt his flesh fail and his strength wane, until finally it was only by a supreme effort that he could drag himself along. By this time he had become so accustomed to the darkness that he lighted his torch only under compulsion, determined to save his oil for some possible emergency. It was while he was groping his way, unlighted, through the darkness, that a rat ran across his path, so near that he struck at and killed it. Upon feeling of it he found that it seemed sleek and prosperous, while its cheeks were pouched out with what proved on examination to be kernels of grain. This discovery, however, only aggravated his despondency, for it convinced him that even the vermin knew the secret of the passageway which he alone had no way of finding out. Then, driven to one of the extremities to which desperate men are reduced, he wrote a message to the world, spent half a day in catching another rat, tied the message to it, and set it free, laughing meanwhile at his own folly.

“And now began the epoch in his underground existence when not only his bodily strength but his mind itself rapidly failed him. Each hour his excursions in search of the mythical passage became shorter and shorter, and the idea of any land beyond this gloomy pit faded further and further into the region of dreams. Finally he gave up any active struggle, and lay for hours in a half-tranced condition, roused only occasionally by the sharper pangs of hunger. In this state he lost all trace of day and night, although he still had with him the less important record of the hours. Even in this semi-stupor, however, he noticed that there was a strange stir of the water every now and then for a certain period in the twenty-four hours, and that for the same length of time there was absolute quiet. In one of his waking intervals it suddenly occurred to him, though why he could not explain, that this phenomenon was in some way connected with day and night. The idea that these strange periodical tremblings on the surface of the lake might furnish the clue to that long-sought outlet to the world above roused him to one last effort. Dragging himself towards the further end, whence the ripplings started, he was rewarded by a glimpse of what seemed to be a slender thread extending from the ceiling directly down into the lake, and which proved upon examination to be nothing else than an iron tube some four inches in diameter. That touch of cold metal thrilled him like an electric battery. This pipe then—this slender thread—this well-tube—was the only connecting link between himself and the habitations of man. But how could he make use of this knowledge? The solution of this problem suggested itself only when, after almost an hour spent in crouching close to the tube, with his ear against it, he distinctly heard the force-pump working above him, and saw the water stir as he had seen it so often. That sound went to his heart like the battle-cry to the soldier’s. For some reason he felt sure that the pipe would be his salvation. Throwing off his shoes and stockings, he clambered into the icy water, and with his feet he traced the pipe down until he found the end and actually felt the water gushing up. Then he made his way back to his resting-place, where he sank, exhausted with joy.

“It was not until the next day, or, at least, until after the next long period of quiet, that he could command himself sufficiently to write the following note by the light of the last few remaining drops of oil:—

“‘I am in the cavern underneath the city. This is the fourth or fifth day of my entombment. My guide, Iesa Malook, is dead. As only he knew the way out, I am lost. For God’s sake, come to the rescue! Take this to the consul general. He will understand all. Lose no time. All my food and oil are gone. I cannot live much longer.’

“This urgent message he signed, wrapped in a shred of handkerchief, tied to a cork of his now empty flask, and in total darkness he dragged himself back to the well-tube. Then he leaped into the lake with the precious message, and, following the course of the pipe, held the packet under the end, and felt it leave his hand and soar up through the tube to the land of sunshine and freedom. Though nearly killed by the shock of the icy water, he crept back to his resting-place, triumphant. He somehow felt that with the first pumping of water his message must fall out, attract the attention of his unknown rescuers, and that in a few hours more he should be rescued. But he had sadly miscalculated. For three days more he lived on the little opium pellets that he had taken from the body of Malook. By this time his food was quite exhausted, and the effect of the strange drug was to plunge him in the most frightful and fantastic waking dreams. Once he dreamed that he was being garroted for the murder of Malook; and the vision was so vivid that he felt convinced that such an end actually awaited him if he returned to the world above, and prayed for immediate death. Before long he was obliged to double the dose, in order to lessen the gnawing of hunger, and the saving grace was soon reduced to a day’s supply. These pills were his last comfort. With them gone, he resolved upon suicide. Upon drawing his revolver, however, he found that, straining with all his might, he lacked the strength needed to lift the hammer. Nothing was left, then, except to swallow the three remaining pills, which he did, with the hope that they might bring the end. This done, he lay back motionless, and, listening to the rhythm of his heart-beat, which sounded farther and farther away, he sank into a slumber which he prayed and believed would be his last.

“When he awoke he was lying on the grassy slopes of the valley of the Kedron, not far from the tomb of Absalom. It was twilight, and in the setting sun the Mount of Olives shone like a pyramid of fire. Looking about him, he saw that Malook’s body was lying at his side. Around him stood a strange group, all conversing in strange tongues,—Jews with yellow and black gowns, Russian pilgrims, Bedouins in flowing scarlet, and English tourists in cork helmets. Suddenly some one bent over him. It was the consul. A great joy lighted up his kind face, as he exclaimed, ‘Good God!—he has opened his eyes—he breathes!—he lives! It is a miracle—nothing short of a miracle!’

“Yes,” concluded the speaker, as he deliberately swallowed two pellets drawn from a small, thimble-shaped box that he had leisurely taken from his vest pocket while speaking, “opium saved that man from starvation, but it made him an opium fiend for life.”

An Angel of Tenderfoot Hill.

BY FREDERICK BRADFORD.

Evening service at the Blackhawk Presbyterian Church was just finished. As the unpainted door swung open before the little body of home-bound worshipers, a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed young man, who for the last half hour had been patrolling the plank walk outside, strode up to the doorway. Standing there with his back against the sash, his eyes gleaming good-humoredly under the stares and winks of certain unregenerate members of the congregation, Jim Hewson recalled a little grimly that the door of a church was the last place where he would have whiled away his Sunday half hours a year ago. But, then, a year ago he had not known Alice Huyler. Now it seemed to him that he had never known any one else.

Alice was the organist, and would be the last to come out. Meantime, Jim, listening dreamily to the notes of the voluntary, found his mind drifting idly back over the past two years of his life. He remembered how he had come to Blackhawk as the agent for the B. & S. Stage Company, without a string or tie of any kind to bind him to place or person. He was not a bad boy then, he thought, though he had lived in some pretty hard sections, and maybe was a bit too familiar with their customs. It seemed to him that he had started wrong, somehow,—had not met the right sort of people at first. The overland stage boys were all right,—good, big-hearted fellows,—but hardly the friends for a young man who might some day aspire to mingle with the best society of Blackhawk—for they had a best society there, even if it was only a mining camp. Their Four Hundred was composed chiefly of member’s of the Presbyterian church, and actually numbered about twoscore.

It did not take long for “pretty Jim,” as the boys affectionately called him, to distinguish himself as a gentleman able to put away his share of forty rod “mountain dew” and lead reckless expeditions in search of a good time. Before he had been there two weeks he broke up a dance at old Prouty’s hall by deliberately shooting out the candles and decorating the ceiling with bullet holes, “just to stampede the outfit,” he said. If this was his only object it was a dismal failure so far as the “ladies” were concerned; they simply refused to be stampeded, but sat down in the middle of the floor and screamed; the “gents,” however, made it a great success by climbing over each other’s heads in frantic endeavor to be among the first to get out of the narrow door. This brilliant stroke of genius gave Jim such prestige among the boys that they unanimously elected him foreman of the “Mulligan Guards Hose Company No. 1,” an organization that served as a social club for the young men of the camp. Their “business meetings” always ended in a free-for-all-high-old-time, and when they went out for a practise run at their usual hour,—10 P.M.,—the knowing citizens, by common consent, went home to bed.

It was after one of these little runs somebody suggested that the Presbyterians were having a “mush and milk debauch or strawberry hurrah,”—he didn’t know which—over on Main Street, and he thought the boys might be able “to enliven the proceedings a little” by “lending their distinguished presence.” This suggestion was unfortunate, in view of the fact that Henrich Schwer, the People’s Candidate for mayor and the Poor Man’s Friend, had sent over to the hose house a keg of beer and demijohn of whiskey as a “slight testimonial of his esteem,” but the idea was promptly acted upon, and the boys all marched over to the church to the tune of “The Mulligan Guards,” a ditty much in vogue in those days. What they did there Jim could not now remember distinctly; he had a dim recollection of helping to buy out a doll-baby bazaar presided over by several pretty but embarrassed young ladies, and of somebody in his crowd having a “difficulty” with Deacon Huyler, during which the others formed a ring and sold pools on the fight. Anyway, he was very much ashamed of the whole business, and testified to this the next night by asking Stancliff, the Sunday-school superintendent,—a good young man whom he had often, and, he was now convinced, unjustly, characterized as a weak sister,—to take him around for the second night of the bazaar. Stancliff was glad to do so, and Jim, in the main, enjoyed his somewhat novel associations. The good sisters of the church, ever ready to snatch a brand from the burning, took him up and introduced him to all the pretty girls, incidentally relieving him of half a month’s salary for votes in all sorts of impossible things. No, they did not introduce him to quite all the pretty girls; there was one, a tall, slight girl in a dark dress, with pale golden hair, brushed primly from her forehead, escaping down her back in a single plait, child fashion, to whom, for some occult reason, he was not presented. Moreover, though he took pains to keep as much as possible in the neighborhood of this particular young lady, she seemed to be perfectly oblivious to his six feet two and bright blue eyes. Piqued by her obvious indifference, he finally asked Stancliff for an introduction, and was gratified to see that worthy gentleman engaged a few moments later in earnest conversation with this fair-haired member of the Blackhawk Four Hundred. But when Stancliff finally came back he appeared to have forgotten Jim’s request altogether, and seemed embarrassed and annoyed about something. Jim divined what that something was, and felt the blood rush to his neck in anger. He had been snubbed, deliberately snubbed, and there was only one thing to do, in the ethics of Blackhawk, and that was to “get square.”

There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes as he silently watched Stancliff, who was trying to make a feeble joke about nothing in particular.

“See here, Stan,” he finally said, “there’s no use of your getting red in the face and clawin’ away from it. I know what’s the matter with you; yer frien’ don’t want no introduction to me, won’t have it nohow; that’s right, aint it?”

“Well, you know, last night—she was here—and the boys—of course you had no hand in it, but you see girls—church girls—are particular, and—

“Oh, yes, I know about that; it’s all right fer as you’re concerned, Stan; you are a bully little feller—treated me white down to the ground, and I aint got nothin’ agin _you_. You have an onpleasant duty to perform, an’ it comes hard, but I’ll help you out. We were—well—drowsy last night—drowsier’n duchesses—the whole billin’ of us, and some—mind I don’t say who—some of us made fools of ourselves and licked her dad, an’ she holds it agin _me_; thinks she’s too good to ’sociate with fellers what has got a little hell in ther’ necks. But, Stan, don’t you let it escape yer two-by-four mem’ry; she will know me better before the night’s over, and its a stack of blues to whites I take her home when this Sunday-school gymnasium lets out, see?”

To the last statement Mr. Stancliff could not subscribe. He admired Jim, as most young men who are admittedly good admire those admittedly bad, and envied him his supreme self-confidence, but, to tell the truth, he expected to be Alice Huyler’s escort that night himself.

Not long after, supper was announced in an adjoining room, and the young people passed out in couples. This was Jim’s opportunity; he purchased two tickets, and, without hesitation, he stepped up to Alice Huyler before Stancliff’s astonished eyes, and said: “Miss Huyler, I know you, and you think you know me well enough not to want to know me any better; that’s so, aint it? Well, you’re making a dead mistake. Now, I’ve two tickets for supper, an’ I don’t want to sit alongside of an empty chair. Will you break bread with a publican and sinner to-night?”

She did not answer at once, but looked about vaguely, as if seeking some avenue of escape. “That’s right; think it over,” Jim went on. “I disremember the circumstances an’ I don’t know whether he belonged to your church or not, but there was a man down in Galilee a few thousand years ago that went around hunting up the kind of fellers what was here last night. I give you my word, Miss Huyler, that if you go in to supper with me it will not stand as an introduction to-morrow unless you wish. I came here because I wanted to do the right thing, and I want you to help me;” then, after a pause, he added significantly, “The hose house is still open.”

Before Alice had time to shape an excuse, Jim had her hand safely on his arm and was in the supper room. What he said to the girl there Stancliff never knew, but that he talked to some purpose was evident from the fact that he walked home with her that night.

This was the beginning of their acquaintance, but, as Jim acknowledged to himself, “he hadn’t no walk over.” Alice Huyler was a girl of Puritan ideals of life, an earnest, consistent church member, with very distinct, if somewhat bigoted, views of right and wrong. Jim did not come up to her standard; she did not approve of him at all, but felt it her Christian duty to do what she could to save his soul, and, with a mental reservation against committing herself in any way, passively permitted his attentions, as their acquaintance progressed. She could not help admiring the big, handsome fellow with his strong, masterful ways; but this weakness she justified to herself by reason of the real good that was in him. Once she let her heart go out to him unreservedly upon learning that he had soundly thrashed two cowboys for insulting a poor little German woman who lived down on the school lands and earned a precarious livelihood by taking in washing; but she repented, and vainly tried to tear the new-born love from her heart when she heard that he, with a dozen other “Guards,” had been arrested and fined for disturbing a prohibition “mass meeting” to the extent of forcing the candidate to announce from a burning dry-goods box that he was the Lone Star candidate for “reform and free whisky.” But Jim squared himself by promptly and vigorously denying the charge; he even went so far as to have his friend, the editor of _The Daily Tomahawk_, print a full account of the affair, in which it was credited to some Southsiders who had pleaded guilty and paid fines under the names of U. S. Grant, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Mary Walker, and others.

But, however much Alice cared for Jim, she gave him no sign. To her Puritan notions she joined a certain wisdom in the world’s ways, and, like most Western maidens, was not to be lightly won; so, though Jim had been her devoted slave for a year—first from pique and a desire to get “square,” and later from a real fondness for the girl,—he had made uncertain progress with his suit. Finally, moved partly by a young man’s desire for worldly advancement, but chiefly by a dogged resolution to break the bond that he could not untie, he had accepted a clerkship with a rich merchant, who monopolized the business for miles around a little border town in Western Arizona. To-night he waited to see Alice for the last time before he went—perhaps for the last time in his life.

She came out of church presently, and smiled up into his face as she laid her hand lightly upon his arm with an air of proprietorship. They walked along in silence, hardly noticing the path which led them through a kind of lovers’ byway over Tenderfoot Hill. At the summit they sat down and looked over the camp, peaceful in the moonlight that veiled its shortcomings.

“It seems good to be here, doesn’t it? just you and me,” Jim said, drawing a long breath of contentment. “I feel away above the boys up here with you.”

“I wish you could get above some of their ways, wherever you are; but that’s too much to hope for, I suppose,” the girl replied, not too graciously; for Jim’s manner that evening was portentous, and she was not sure enough of her own feelings to want to hear what he might have to say. But Jim, who had hitherto shown fight when his associates were aspersed, now only replied wearily:—

“I know you are not fond of the gang I travel with, but their ways are mine for the time being, an’ I’ve no call to be above them; you’re hard on us, just the same.” Then, after a pause, he added bitterly: “It seems to me you are always just a little flintier after a sermon. I don’t seem to belong to the kind of crowd you people want to save; it’s only the good ones you’re after, I guess.”

“Don’t think that,” she cried earnestly; “you wrong the church and you are unjust to me. For my part, I would do anything in the world to make any one better or bring a soul nearer to God. O Jim, there is so much that is good and noble in you, why won’t you give yourself a chance? If I could only make you understand that _you_ are the one I want to save.” Unconsciously, she took his hand and clung to it in the fervor of her appeal. That much Jim understood, and he promptly imprisoned her hand in both of his, saying, “I don’t know about your saving me—I guess you had better let that job out; but you can make me better, little one; you can make me better with a word, and bring me so near heaven that my head will bump the stars. It’s taking a mean advantage of you to tell you now; and, honestly, I didn’t mean to do it, but I love you, Alice, I love you. I was going away to-morrow without saying a word, ’cause I knowed I was a dead loser, anyway, and I aint the kind to squeal; but just now it seemed to me that sometime when you kinder got to thinking of the past you would miss something, and then you’d be glad to know that Jim loves you, and that he’s keeping you in his heart. You don’t care for it now—that’s all right; but know it—know it good—it’s not hard to say; I love you—yes, I love you better than—I do the gang,” he ended lamely; but quickly, fired by the purpose of a great sacrifice for that love, he added, in a tone that carried conviction, “and I’ll shake ’em to-morrow if you say the word.”

For a moment Alice was stunned by the suddenness of her return to earth; but she saw nothing incongruous in her appeal and his reply; she could only think that he loved her and that he was going away. For a few moments she sat without speaking, her face gleaming softly in the moonlight, her slim fingers lying passive in the strong hand that touched hers so reverently. Then she answered simply: “Now that you have said it, Jim, I am not sorry, though I would have prevented it if I could. I can’t help being glad to know that you love me—the knowledge is sweet to me; it would be to any woman, I think; but, O Jim, I don’t know all of my own heart; I can only say that you are very, very dear to me.”

“No, no,” she cried, as he sought to draw her to him, “not that, Jim, not now; I want to be honest with you—with myself. You are dear to me, Jim, it’s true, but I have no confidence in you—I can’t trust you; I am sorry, but I can’t. That sounds hard, I know, and it’s a poor return to make for the love you offer; but what can I say? If you could prove to me that you care more for me than anything else it would come all right, I know, and I’d wait for you, Jim, I’d wait years. I can’t say more than that.”

“Alice,” the man said slowly, “I don’t want you to say more than that. I know what waiting means, an’ its only a grain of hope; but that’s tons and tons more than I deserve. I told you that I was going away to-morrow, and I am; but don’t feel that you drove me out of the camp; whatever happens, you ain’t got nothing to answer for. The fact is, it’s getting too teetotally civilized up here for me, anyway; this thing of building in railroads and developing the country afterwards is ruining this section for a young man. I’ve got a lay-out down in Arizona, and I am going to play it. You think I can’t keep straight? Well, I think I can, if it will pay dividends; and if you say, ‘Jim, come back to me in two years, good and pious like,’ I’ll do it, Alice; I’ll do it if it breaks me.”

“Perhaps I oughtn’t to say it,” the girl answered gently; “but it’s our only chance. In two years, if you want to come back and say again what you have said to-night, I’ll listen.”

When Jim went home that night he astonished Ed Saulsbury, his room-mate, by making him a present of his silver whisky flask and writing out his resignation as foreman of Hose Company No. 1.

Jim’s resignation was received by the boys with sincere regret, and a committee was appointed, which prevailed upon him to defer his departure a day, in order that they might send him away with proper honors. The next morning the following invitation, printed upon glazed cardboard in gold lettering, was issued:—

Mr. James Hewson,

(alias JIM)

late Foreman of the Mulligan Guards Hose Company No. 1, being
about to leave Blackhawk for the benefit of his health and
morals, and the good of the town, it is proposed by a few of
his delighted friends to give him an old-time complimentary
send-off hop, at

Prouty’s Hall,

this, Monday, evening, the tenth, to which you are respectfully
invited.

The dance was a great success, despite the fact that Jack Gillis got more on board than was good for him, and insisted upon setting fire to the hall, just to give Jim a chance to make a last run with the Hose Company.

* * * * *

In the barren little Arizona town of San Biciente a man struggled, and toiled, and dreamed away the two dreary years of his probation. True, many of the asperities of the rough life were smoothed away by the daily increasing favor shown by Don Jose Macias, the rich merchant with whom he lived and worked, and by the assiduous caretaking of Don Jose’s pretty black-eyed daughter, Josfita. Moreover, the better class natives, attracted by his aptitude in acquiring the Spanish tongue and by the boyish _bonhomie_ that had made Jim the joy and pride of the “Blackhawk Mulligan Guards Hose Company,” showed themselves more than ready to initiate him into certain Mexican methods of killing any time not occupied by his business. But, though chuses, monte, cock-fights, and bayles were seductive sports to a young man of Jim’s temperament, his promise to Alice was far more potent. Occasionally, to be sure, he so far fell from grace as to try his luck at the cards or to sun himself a little too long in Josfita’s admiring glances. Jim did not attain his full growth as a man at one bound. But the memory of that face as he had seen it, shining with tenderness for him, and of that voice, bidding him prove himself worthy of her trust, was never long absent from his mind. Alice had said that she would wait for him. That assurance was the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that guided this wanderer through the desert of distasteful toil and sordid living to the promised land of life with the woman he worshiped. And so the years dragged by.

That promised land seemed very real and near to Jim one spring morning, two years after his arrival, when he boarded the stage that was to carry him toward Blackhawk. Indeed, it was only an hour before that Jim, sitting in the little room behind the shop with his patron, had rejected an estate of earthly acres for this immaterial Canaan.

“You go back to your own country, that’s all right,” the little man had said unctuously, pressing upon his former clerk a glass of the rare wine reserved ordinarily for weddings and fête days. “You find it much changed. _Poco tempo_ you come back. I like your work. You be my partner. You lack Josfita? All right. She have two hundred thousand dollars. You marry her, my _bien good amigo_.”

But if Jim’s eyes had glistened and Jim’s breath had come short upon his realization of the Don’s generosity, that was simply through joy that he had seen what stood to him for all the kingdoms of the earth unrolled before him, and had renounced them for the woman who waited for him in the North.

Before he went he had assured the Don both of his undying gratitude and of his sorrow that he could not accept his offer, in a manner so delicate that that worthy Mexican realized the full import of the young man’s words only after Jim, seated in the rickety stage-coach, had put at least five miles between himself and San Biciente.

Thirty-six hours later, when the evening train thundered into the big, new brownstone railroad station at Blackhawk, the passengers watched a little curiously the big man in the garb of a cow-puncher, who alighted from the car and stood for a moment on the platform with the set stare and stiff movements of one in a trance. In those two years of banishment, hundreds of miles from railroads and newspapers, Jim’s life had been untouched by the farthest wave of the widening sea of change. At the end of two years San Biciente and the country about it were exactly as he had first found them. On the day that he boarded the stage-coach at San Biciente he himself was the same Jim, a little bigger and stronger, perhaps, and, but for the picturesque long hair, more handsome. His blue eyes shone complacently beneath his wide sombrero, and his broad shoulders, under the rolling shirt collar and bright neck-handkerchief, swung with a certain air of harmless satisfaction. In fact, it was not until he had found himself seated in the railroad car that whirled him over the last stage of his journey, and caught the curious glances bent upon him by the conventionally garbed wearers of patent leather shoes and stiff derby hats, that it occurred to Jim that he was not of the world about him. Then, as the train bore him farther and farther, through rows of newly erected houses, and past enormous factories, which seemed to have sprung like magic among the familiar hills and valleys, the sparkle faded from his eyes, and his big shoulders drooped forward. Even the gold band on his sombrero, that had cost him a good twenty-five dollars at San Biciente, seemed to have lost its glitter.

As he hurried up Blackhawk’s main thoroughfare, lined now with imposing shops and warehouses, he felt that in some inexplicable way everything had grown away from and above him. Upon the very spot where the old engine house had stood a brownstone club house projected its imposing front upon the street. A brick hotel, glittering with electric lights, reared its five stories in the place of the yellow-painted corner store, whose upstairs dance hall had been the scene of the “stampede.”

And the church,—the little unpainted church where he had met Alice, and at whose door he had waited for her on that memorable evening two years ago? Even on the threshold of this long-expected meeting Jim felt drawn by an irresistible impulse towards the spot around which clustered so many sacred memories. But as he drew near to the familiar meeting of ways where the old church had stood the man stopped short and drew his hand across his eyes as if to brush away a mist. The little church was gone, wiped out of existence like a picture from a slate! Nothing but a marble tablet, placed over the arched doorway of a pretentious granite edifice, assured him that this was still the site of the First Presbyterian Church of Blackhawk. At the sight of that last transformation Jim’s heart sank. In all that delirium of progress could Alice alone have remained unchanged? The doubt descended like a black cloud, blotting out all his happy visions of an hour ago. As he stood irresolute, looking up and down the street, the deep notes of an organ floated out through the open door of the church. To Jim, standing outside in the darkness, the solemn music seemed to promise the strengthening of his purpose and the solution of all his doubts and anxieties. Yielding once more to that undefined but irresistible impulse that had brought him hither, he stole through the doorway and into the church. Service had already begun when Jim, entering on tiptoe, seated himself in a pew near the door, reverently removing his sombrero, which he placed on the floor next the aisle. Around him there were flowers, and bright lights, and all the modern church’s appeals to the unregenerate, but Jim noted with a sinking heart that among this fashionably garbed congregation there was not a single familiar face or figure. Again that sickening doubt descended on the man, bowing his head with a weight like that of a physical burden, and for the time blotting out church, and lights, and flowers. Even when the service was finished and the congregation was dispersing to the sound of the organ’s voluntary Jim waited, his head bowed, his eyes fixed like those of a man in a trance—waited until the sound of a man’s voice, that seemed to speak to him across the gulf of two years, sounded in his ears. It was Stancliff, the Sunday-school superintendent of other days, coming down the aisle, talking eagerly to a young woman, whose face, looking up into his own, was hidden, but who, by token of her dress and bearing, belonged to that invading throng whom Jim had already come to hate. As they passed the pew where Jim still sat, the folds of the woman’s dress brushed against his sombrero, and for a moment she looked around. In that moment Jim saw her face. It was the face of Alice Huyler, but so changed under its modish capote, set jauntily on the waving yellow hair, so ripened in its expression and molding, above all, so radiant with emotions and interests that Jim had never touched that it seemed more alien than that of any stranger in the congregation. As he sat there waiting for the couple to pass by him and out of the church, Jim did not attempt to define the relations between Stancliff and Alice. He did not ask to know whether Stancliff was husband, lover, or friend to this woman,—the woman that he had loved and who had promised to wait for him. What he did know was that the years had opened between himself and Alice a yawning chasm, a chasm that no memories nor promises, however sacred, could ever bridge.

Rapt in such thoughts, he sat, half dazed, until the congregation had dispersed and the sexton appeared to put out the lights. Then, rousing, he fumbled for his sombrero, which had been swept under a neighboring pew, recovered it, and, rising, passed slowly, with bowed head, out into the night.

In Miggles’ Alley.

BY HERMAN BROWNSON.

His real name was Tim O’Hagan, but in Miggles’ Alley he was familiarly known as Shingles. This was because, while a bootblack by profession, he spent a large share of his life on the roof of a five-story tenement house, tending his baby brother. On this particular occasion, however, he rose above his callings of bootblack and nursemaid, and became a hero.

The region about Miggles’ Alley is not precisely a hotbed of heroism. Indeed, there is probably not a corner of America in which the poverty-stricken and depraved of all nations meet in such strength as here, where the social sewers from the four corners of the earth seem to empty themselves. But Shingles, looking down upon the streets from the high plane of the tenement housetop, saw more of the color, and whirl, and bigness of the streets than of their mud and meanness. He saw the circus parade as it swept gleaming by. He saw the crowd pouring through the neighboring streets,—a black river of humanity.

Best of all, he looked almost daily on the wonderful maneuvers of the fire company, whose engine house, opposite one entrance of the tenement house, was Shingles’ favorite resort. On those rare occasions when he was free to ply his trade, Shingles earned several dimes and nickels, and incidentally many golden opinions, from the good-natured fire laddies, who recognized a kindred spirit in this mite of ten. And when chained by duty to his post on the roof, Shingles could, if he liked, exchange occasional salutes with the objects of his worship as they lounged in the street below. As for those moments when the alarm gong rang, and his friends at the engine house jumped into their places on the hose carriage or the hook-and-ladder trucks, and were whirled off to scenes of adventure, those were periods of combined pride and pain to Shingles. The pride was for his comrades; the pain that he, by reason of his ten years and absorbing occupation, was cut off from any share in these deeds of daring. Only in make-believe could he climb ladders and rescue people from burning buildings; and, while it was easy to play circus parade with the baby and pussy cat in a soap-box on rollers for the band chariot, the heroism of the fire laddie called for a greater exercise of talent.