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It was, however, settled that Miss Budd should go to Sacramento to visit her friends, that Abner would join her later, when their engagement would be announced, and that she should not return to the hotel until they were married. The compact was sealed by the interchange of a friendly kiss from Miss Budd with a patient, tolerating one from Abner, and then it suddenly occurred to them both that they might as well return to their duties in the hotel, which they did. Miss Budd’s entire outing that Sunday lasted only half an hour.

A week elapsed. Miss Budd was in Sacramento, and the landlord of the Big Flume Hotel was standing at his usual post in the doorway during dinner, when a waiter handed him a note. It contained a single line scrawled in pencil:–

“Come out and see me behind the house as before. I dussent come in on account of her. C. BYERS.”

“On account of ‘her’!” Abner cast a hurried glance around the tables. Certainly Mrs. Byers was not there! He walked in the hall and the veranda–she was not there. He hastened to the rendezvous evidently meant by the writer, the wilderness behind the house. Sure enough, Byers, drunk and maudlin, supporting himself by the tree root, staggered forward, clasped him in his arms, and murmured hoarsely,–

“She’s gone!”

“Gone?” echoed Abner, with a whitening face. “Mrs. Byers? Where?”

“Run away! Never come back no more! Gone!”

A vague idea that had been in Abner’s mind since Byers’s last visit now took awful shape. Before the unfortunate Byers could collect his senses he felt himself seized in a giant’s grasp and forced against the tree.

“You coward!” said all that was left of the tolerant Abner–his even voice–“you hound! Did you dare to abuse her? to lay your vile hands on her–to strike her? Answer me.”

The shock–the grasp–perhaps Abner’s words, momentarily silenced Byers. “Did I strike her?” he said dazedly; “did I abuse her? Oh, yes!” with deep irony. “Certainly! In course! Look yer, pardner!”–he suddenly dragged up his sleeve from his red, hairy arm, exposing a blue cicatrix in its centre–“that’s a jab from her scissors about three months ago; look yer!”–he bent his head and showed a scar along the scalp–“that’s her playfulness with a fire shovel! Look yer!”–he quickly opened his collar, where his neck and cheek were striped and crossed with adhesive plaster–“that’s all that was left o’ a glass jar o’ preserves–the preserves got away, but some of the glass got stuck! That’s when she heard I was a di-vorced man and hadn’t told her.”

“Were you a di-vorced man?” gasped Abner.

“You know that; in course I was,” said Byers scornfully; “d’ye meanter say she didn’t tell ye?”

“She?” echoed Abner vaguely. “Your wife–you said just now she didn’t know it before.”

“My wife ez oncet was, I mean! Mary Ellen–your wife ez is to be,” said Byers, with deep irony. “Oh, come now. Pretend ye don’t know! Hi there! Hands off! Don’t strike a man when he’s down, like I am.”

But Abner’s clutch of Byers’s shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin silent tears.

“Mary Ellen–your first wife?” repeated Abner vacantly.

“Yesh!” said Byers thickly, “my first wife–shelected and picked out fer your shecond wife–by your first–like d—-d conundrum. How wash I t’know?” he said, with a sudden shriek of public expostulation–“thash what I wanter know. Here I come to talk with fr’en’, like man to man, unshuspecting, innoshent as chile, about my shecond wife! Fr’en’ drops out, carryin’ off the whiskey. Then I hear all o’ suddent voice o’ Mary Ellen talkin’ in kitchen; then I come round softly and see Mary Ellen–my wife as useter be– standin’ at fr’en’s kitchen winder. Then I lights out quicker ‘n lightnin’ and scoots! And when I gets back home, I ups and tells my wife. And whosh fault ish’t! Who shaid a man oughter tell hish wife? You! Who keepsh other mensh’ first wivesh at kishen winder to frighten ’em to tell? You!”