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For a charming instant the figure of Jack Hamlin, handsome, careless, and confident, was framed in the doorway. His dark eyes, with their habitual scorn of his average fellow-man, swept superciliously over Mr. Bowers, and rested for an instant with caressing familiarity on the editor.

“Well, sonny, any news from the old girl at the Summit?”

“No-o,” hastily stammered the editor, with a half-hysterical laugh. “No, Jack. Excuse me a moment.”

“All right; busy, I see. Hasta manana.”

The picture vanished, the frame was empty.

“You see,” continued the editor, turning to Mr. Bowers, “there has been a mistake. I”–but he stopped suddenly at the ashen face of Mr. Bowers, still fixed in the direction of the vanished figure.

“Are you ill?”

Mr. Bowers did not reply, but slowly withdrew his eyes, and turned them heavily on the editor. Then, drawing a longer, deeper breath, he picked up his soft felt hat, and, moulding it into shape in his hands as if preparing to put it on, he moistened his dry, grayish lips, and said, gently:–

“Friend o’ yours?”

“Yes,” said the editor–“Jack Hamlin. Of course, you know him?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Bowers here put his hat on his head, and, after a pause, turned round slowly once or twice, as if he had forgotten it, and was still seeking it. Finally he succeeded in finding the editor’s hand, and shook it, albeit his own trembled slightly. Then he said:–

“I reckon you’re right. There’s bin a mistake. I see it now. Good-by. If you’re ever up my way, drop in and see me.” He then walked to the doorway, passed out, and seemed to melt into the afternoon shadows of the hall.

He never again entered the office of the “Excelsior Magazine,” neither was any further contribution ever received from White Violet. To a polite entreaty from the editor, addressed first to “White Violet” and then to Mrs. Delatour, there was no response. The thought of Mr. Hamlin’s cynical prophecy disturbed him, but that gentleman, preoccupied in filling some professional engagements in Sacramento, gave him no chance to acquire further explanations as to the past or the future. The youthful editor was at first in despair and filled with a vague remorse of some unfulfilled duty. But, to his surprise, the readers of the magazine seemed to survive their talented contributor, and the feverish life that had been thrilled by her song, in two months had apparently forgotten her. Nor was her voice lifted from any alien quarter; the domestic and foreign press that had echoed her lays seemed to respond no longer to her utterance.

It is possible that some readers of these pages may remember a previous chronicle by the same historian wherein it was recorded that the volatile spirit of Mr. Hamlin, slightly assisted by circumstances, passed beyond these voices at the Ranch of the Blessed Fisherman, some two years later. As the editor stood beside the body of his friend on the morning of the funeral, he noticed among the flowers laid upon his bier by loving hands a wreath of white violets. Touched and disturbed by a memory long since forgotten, he was further embarrassed, as the cortege dispersed in the Mission graveyard, by the apparition of the tall figure of Mr. James Bowers from behind a monumental column. The editor turned to him quickly.

“I am glad to see you here,” he said, awkwardly, and he knew not why; then, after a pause, “I trust you can give me some news of Mrs. Delatour. I wrote to her nearly two years ago, but had no response.”

“Thar’s bin no Mrs. Delatour for two years,” said Mr. Bowers, contemplatively stroking his beard; “and mebbe that’s why. She’s bin for two years Mrs. Bowers.”

“I congratulate you,” said the editor; “but I hope there still remains a White Violet, and that, for the sake of literature, she has not given up”–

“Mrs. Bowers,” interrupted Mr. Bowers, with singular deliberation, “found that makin’ po’try and tendin’ to the cares of a growin’-up famerly was irritatin’ to the narves. They didn’t jibe, so to speak. What Mrs. Bowers wanted–and what, po’try or no po’try, I’ve bin tryin’ to give her–was Rest! She’s bin havin’ it comfor’bly up at my ranch at Mendocino, with her children and me. Yes, sir”–his eye wandered accidentally to the new-made grave–“you’ll excuse my sayin’ it to a man in your profession, but it’s what most folks will find is a heap better than readin’ or writin’ or actin’ po’try–and that’s Rest!”