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“But you surely don’t expect you will ever see Bob, again!” said the editor, impatiently. “You have trusted him with enough to start him for the Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you have established in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised that a man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp the second time.”

“My knowledge of the world,” returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, “tells me that’s the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesn’t make a habit, nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had never tried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishment by doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is stronger than any other. ‘Tisn’t everybody that gets that chance,” he added, with an odd laugh.

Nevertheless, three hours passed without bringing Bob. The two men had gone to the billiard-room, when a waiter brought a note, which he handed to Mr. Hamlin with some apologetic hesitation. It bore no superscription, but had been brought by a boy who described Mr. Hamlin perfectly, and requested that the note should be handed to him with the remark that “Bob had come back.”

“And is he there now?” asked Mr. Hamlin, holding the letter unopened in his hand.

“No, sir; he run right off.”

The editor laughed, but Mr. Hamlin, having perused the note, put away his cue. “Come into my room,” he said.

The editor followed, and Mr. Hamlin laid the note before him on the table. “Bob’s all right,” he said, “for I’ll bet a thousand dollars that note is genuine.”

It was delicately written, in a cultivated feminine hand, utterly unlike the scrawl that had first excited the editor’s curiosity, and ran as follows:–

He who brought me the bounty of your friend–for I cannot call a recompense so far above my deserts by any other name–gives me also to understand that you wished for an interview. I cannot believe that this is mere idle curiosity, or that you have any motive that is not kindly and honorable, but I feel that I must beg and pray you not to seek to remove the veil behind which I have chosen to hide myself and my poor efforts from identification. I THINK I know you–I KNOW I know myself–well enough to believe it would give neither of us any happiness. You will say to your generous friend that he has already given the Unknown more comfort and hope than could come from any personal compliment or publicity, and you will yourself believe that you have all unconsciously brightened a sad woman’s fancy with a Dream and a Vision that before today had been unknown to

WHITE VIOLET.

“Have you read it?” asked Mr. Hamlin.

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t want to see it any more, or even remember you ever saw it,” said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces and letting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.

“But, I say, Jack! look here; I don’t understand! You say you have already seen this woman, and yet”–

“I HAVEN’T seen her,” said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right here and leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, and–that I owe you that dinner.”

CHAPTER IV

When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr. Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupant of a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tall figure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. James Bowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had just abandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, but Mr. Bowers’s resources were a life-long experience and technical skill; he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and his knowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr. Hamlin’s luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormal growths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers’s visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even figuratively accept the omen.