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Miss Alice (interrupting with a wounded, dove-like timidity).–“Oh, never mind, please!”

The cabin offered but scanty accommodation to the tourists; which fact, when indignantly presented by Mrs. Rightbody, was explained by the good-humored Ryder from the circumstance that the usual hotel was only a slight affair of boards, cloth, and paper, put up during the season, and partly dismantled in the fall. “You couldn’t be kept warm enough there,” he added. Nevertheless Miss Alice noticed that both Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe retired there with their pipes, after having prepared the ladies’ supper, with the assistance of an Indian woman, who apparently emerged from the earth at the coming of the party, and disappeared as mysteriously.

The stars came out brightly before they slept; and the next morning a clear, unwinking sun beamed with almost summer power through the shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the details of its rude interior. Two or three mangy, half-eaten buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory. A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity respected its secret. Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her husband’s unknown correspondent. “Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five represent two members of the Vigilance Committee, my dear, and Mr. Ryder will assist me to find them.”

“Mr. Ryder!” ejaculated Miss Alice, in scornful astonishment.

“Alice,” said Mrs. Rightbody, with a suspicious assumption of sudden defence, “you injure yourself, you injure me, by this exclusive attitude. Mr. Ryder is a friend of your father’s, an exceedingly well-informed gentleman. I have not, of course, imparted to him the extent of my suspicions. But he can help me to what I must and will know. You might treat him a little more civilly–or, at least, a little better than you do his servant, your guide. Mr. Ryder is a gentleman, and not a paid courier.”

Miss Alice was suddenly attentive. When she spoke again, she asked, “Why do you not find out something about this Silsbie–who died–or was hung–or something of that kind?”

“Child!” said Mrs. Rightbody, “don’t you see there was no Silsbie, or, if there was, he was simply the confidant of that–woman?”

A knock at the door, announcing the presence of Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe with the horses, checked Mrs. Rightbody’s speech. As the animals were being packed, Mrs. Rightbody for a moment withdrew in confidential conversation with Mr. Ryder, and, to the young lady’s still greater annoyance, left her alone with Stanislaus Joe. Miss Alice was not in good temper, but she felt it necessary to say something.

“I hope the hotel offers better quarters for travellers than this in summer,” she began.

“It does.”

“Then this does not belong to it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Who lives here, then?”

“I do.”

“I beg your pardon,” stammered Miss Alice, “I thought you lived where we hired–where we met you–in–in–You must excuse me.”

“I’m not a regular guide; but as times were hard, and I was out of grub, I took the job.”

“Out of grub!” “job!” And SHE was the “job.” What would Henry Marvin say? It would nearly kill him. She began herself to feel a little frightened, and walked towards the door.

“One moment, miss!”

The young girl hesitated. The man’s tone was surly, and yet indicated a certain kind of half-pathetic grievance. HER curiosity got the better of her prudence, and she turned back.

“This morning,” he began hastily, “when we were coming down the valley, you picked me up twice.”

“I picked YOU up?” repeated the astonished Alice.

“Yes, CONTRADICTED me: that’s what I mean,–once when you said those rocks were volcanic, once when you said the flower you picked was a poppy. I didn’t let on at the time, for it wasn’t my say; but all the while you were talking I might have laid for you–“