Choy Susan

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art and Politics.

I.

THE ADVENT OF TEN MOON.

LESTER BALDWIN, storekeeper down at Sloan’s Camp, arrived one morning at a Chinese fishing-village on the shore of the wide Pacific Ocean, in search of a few more hands for the railroad.

Instead of inquiring for the “ bossee man ” of the village, it was, strangely enough, a woman, Choy Susan, to whom he directed himself. Choy Susan enjoyed in the Celestial community — partly through innate force of character, and partly as the only one who had mastered the English speech, and thus made herself of invaluable use in business dealings with the outside world — a position quite unusual with her sex.

For the moment she was not at home. Nor was her partner, Yuen Wa, a superannuated old man whom she employed to tend shop for her during her frequent absences, which often included even bold excursions to the fishing-grounds.

As the storekeeper stood knocking at her door, he may be described as a person of lank figure, “sandy-complected,” as he himself would have said, with a sandy “goatee,” and a slight cast in one eye. He had, when he spoke, a chronic huskiness of voice. He was known to his friends not at all as Lester, but “ Yank,” or Yankee, Baldwin.

A large green parrot, the unsociable “ Tong,” hung out in a wooden cage beside the door, woke up, and delivered a torrent of jargon, probably abuse, in response to his knock.

“ Quack-a-lee ! cack-a-lee-lee-ee ! whoooosh ! You ‘re another,” returned Yank Baldwin, in a facetious mood, by way of a reply in kind, and went on further in his search.

The village had a deserted look that day. Even some doors which had stood ajar on the storekeeper’s first approach now churlishly closed. There was no one near the tawdry little out-of-doors theatre, no one at the fane of Hop Wo ; there were no smooth polls being scraped at the barber-shop. A person at the smoky little cabaret, with its heavy wooden tables, who was engaged in preparing a confection of hog’s fat and sweetmeats for the noonday meal, answered shortly to inquiries only “ Twel’ o’clock! ” and could not be induced to say another word.

“ I’d like to wring ” — began Yank Baldwin, upon this, indignantly ; but then, “ Oh, well, what’s the use ! ”

He saw some men at a distance, on the beach, by a smoking tar-kettle among the bowlders, apparently mending a boat. He was betaking himself thither, and had reached a point where a grotesque idol, a deity of fishermen, was squatted on a flat rock among the dwellings, when he heard himself hailed: “ Eh, one man ! where you go ? ”

Copyright, 1884, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.

It was Choy Susan herself, who had perhaps observed his quest, and now came out, laying aside some occupation in a shed used for storage. She waddled towards him, her ample form costumed in wide jacket and pantaloons of a shiny black cotton, men’s gaiters on her large feet, and a bunch of keys dangling from her girdle. Her skin was plentifully marked with the traces left by small-pox.

“ Oh, is that you, Choy Susan ? How dy do ? ”

“ How do ? ” replied Clioy Susan, severely.

“ It’s a month o’ Sundays since I ’ve seen you, Susan. I declare, it’s good for weak eyes to set ’em on a fine, strappin’, handsome woman like you, agin.”

“ Too much dam’ talkee! What want?” responded the Chinese woman, treating this ingratiatory palaver with brusque contempt.

“ Well, we ’ll get down to business right away, then, if you say so. Say ! I want catchee about a dozen good China boys to go down workee on railroad, Miller’s division.”

“ No, can’t catchee nothin’ here. Man all gone flish. Bimeby, some time, other day.”

“ Good pay ! plenty eat! plenty much rice ! ” said the other, continuing imperturbably, and making pantomime of raising food to the mouth with both hands. “ I knew you was the one to come to. Sez I, ‘If Choy Susan can’t git ’em for us, nobody kin.’ ”

“ Too much talkee ! No, can’t catchee nothing.”

And she made as if about to bluntly conclude the interview and go back to her occupation.

“ It’s probably Easterby that would want ’em, if they was wanted,” appealed the applicant. “ You know Easterby, you know. He’s a white man.”

“ Mist’ Easte’by he a daisy,” she returned. She seemed mollified at the name, and gazed up the street as if now more inclined to consider the matter. This Easterby, in fact, had ingratiated himself with her of old by some politeness or service, — a way he had with people.

The village consisted of a long main street of wooden cabins, silvered gray by the weather, with a motley cluster, nearer shore, of fish-houses, strange dismantled boats, odd tackles, and, above them, frames of tall poles, along which were strung rows of fish to dry. The site was amid rugged bowlders, silvery-gray like the houses. Bright spots of color, the patches of red and yellow papers inscribed with hieroglyphics, a pennant, a tasseled glass lantern, a carved and gilded sign, scattered through it all, might serve from a distance as a reminder of the vivid spring wild-flowers, now vanished from the brown, dry, summer pastures.

Just in the edge of the expansive blue bay beneath lay at anchor the Chinese junk, the Good Success and Golden Profits, — to transcribe into practicable form the mystic blazonry of her title in the original, — which had come round on her periodic trip from San Francisco, to gather up the product of the fishing industry and bring a freight of salt and empty barrels. She had discharged cargo, and all at present was as quiet on board of her as elsewhere.

“That’s right, now,” pursued Yank Baldwin, following up his advantage. “ Easterby’s allers said your bark was worse than your bite.”

Choy Susan’s bark was, in fact, worse than her bite. She was plainly in the habit of being much bowed down before and deferred to ; and this, together with her practice of defending herself against mockers, of whom she had met with many among “ Melican ” men, in a long experience, had given her a manner bluff, masculine, and inclining to surly rudeness. But this was in part a defense, as has been said ; and there were moments when, under her unsmiling exterior, she almost seemed to appreciate the humor of herself.

She prided herself on giving back to mockers as good as they sent, in their own vernacular. She had learned her English first at the Stockton Street Mission at San Francisco, of which she had once been an inmate, and perfected it at the mines at Bodie. Now Bodie was a place where it was charged that they would steal a red-hot stove with a fire in it, and “ a bad man from Bodie ” had passed into a proverb for what was lawless and terrorizing. At this university she had picked up a choice store of slang likely to be useful to her in her way of life, together with her half-English name and independent methods of action which made her an awe-inspiring figure before the eyes of her fellowcountrymen.

The negotiation for laborers had progressed to about the point indicated when a prodigious clattering of hoofs was heard in the distance. On they came, drawing nearer, the sound increasing to a phenomenal racket.

“ Ger-eat Scott ! ” cried Yank Baldwin, pulling his hat down upon his head and running around a corner to see the more clearly, followed by Choy Susan.

A horseman came tearing into the settlement like a comet come ashore. It was a Chinaman, mounted on a small roan steed, which snorted, wheezed, kicked, and bolted in the most extraordinary manner. The Chinaman’s loose clothing ballooned in the wind, his eyes were starting from his head in terror, and at every plunge of the animal he bounded high from the saddle.

A stride or two more, and they were here ; another, and they were gone far up the street.

A sudden population, now appearing, — wherever they had been, — rushed out and threw themselves in the track of the flying cavalier, crying after him in tones of agonized entreaty,—

“ Ten Moon ! Ten Moon ! ”

“ Ten Moon ! ” shrieked the parrot, Tong, at Choy Susan’s door, in goblinlike mockery.

Never, perhaps, since the days of the “ fiery untamed steed ” of Mazeppa, or since Roland brought the good news to Ghent, had equestrian arrived anywhere in more redoubtable haste than this.

“ Well, if it ain’t Ten Moon, cook o’ the Palace Boardin’ House, on my pony, Rattleweed ! Oho ! ho ! ho-o ! The boys has put up a job on him!” cried Yank Baldwin, slapping himself on the thigh with a coarse big hand. “ A Chinaman on horseback ! ” he continued : “that beats a sailor, and they beat the Dutch,” and he doubled himself up in convulsions of delight.

Turning inadvertently about, in his amusement, he discovered a new figure, a pleasing young woman, standing behind him. He reported at camp afterwards that he was “ dead gone on ” her from the first instant. She had come quietly out of the storage shed, where she had been in conference with Choy Susan.

She was attired in brown merino, with several furbelows on the skirt, and at the neck a wide linen collar of fresh appearance, and her brown hair was neatly smoothed. Her girlish face, of a clear paleness, had the features rather small, and a somewhat long upper lip which contributed to give her a thoughtful cast. She wore a flamboyant hat, which might have been the mode on the Eastern seaboard some years before. The knowing in such matters would have detected considerable trace of rusticity, but to Yank Baldwin she seemed the epitome of elegant distinction, — a person far beyond all those he was in the habit of seeing in his way of life. He considered her “ high-toned,” or “ tony,” in the extreme ; and a thought of infidelity to one Spanish Luisa occurred to him.

He immediately drew a long face, as if his mirth were not decorous before the stranger. He threw out, by way of overture at conversation, the remark, —

“ A pleasant day ! ”

“ Yes, it is a pleasant day.”

But she gave him very little heed ; her glance was following with a painful intensity the flying form of Ten Moon.

“ Oh, he will be hurt; he will be killed, will he not ? ” she cried, clasping her hands tightly as the rider disappeared brusquely around a turn.

“ Yes, I s’pose so; that is, I hope so,” replied the storekeeper nonchalantly, quite as if it were a matter of course.

The trio were walking onward to witness the end of the adventure, which must certainly now be near its close, among the narrow by-ways of the place ; and Choy Susan was a little behind the two.

“ You talk so about a fellow-being ? ” said the young girl, turning upon him indignantly.

“ Well, may be they is feller-bein’s. I dunno but they is,” he returned, weakening under her glance, and taking an apologetic tone. “ I dunno’s I’ve got anything so particular agin ’em, if you hain’t.”

He apparently began to admire the spirit and originality of her ideas, as well as her good looks.

“ The Chinese has got to go, though, I s’pose ? ” he suggested inquiringly.

“ Well, that’s no reason for wanting them all to he fatally injured while they ’re here.”

But she had a much closer interest than general benevolence for the race in this, her messenger; for her messenger Ten Moon was.

“ What is the matter with the pony, and why do they call him Rattleweed? ” she now condescended to inquire.

“They’ve got to call him something,” he replied, as if this were a full and complete explanation.

“ Oh ! ” was her only comment, taking him in his own way, which pleased him ; and before he could begin the further explanation he intended, he was suddenly called away to take part in a curious melee which met their eyes in front.

The fiery little animal, after circulating impatiently in various by-ways, had been checked by rocks and fishing paraphernalia, forming a cul-de-sac. This had given time for assistance to come up. Some had thrown their arms wildly about his neck ; others had seized Ten Moon’s legs; still others endeavored, with ropes, sticks, and poles, to snare the fuming pony and throw him down.

Taken thus at a disadvantage, Rattleweed now at last succumbed, with a certain expression of duty accomplished. He went down amid great clamor, Ten Moon still in the saddle, and the rest falling upon these in a confused mass.

All emerged from this chaos, miraculous to say, with but few bruises and practically unharmed. When Ten Moon had well felt of his bones and found that none of them were broken, he began a voluble recital of his story to the crowd. The young surveyors down at Sloan’s Camp, he said, had mounted him on this never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed animal, under pretense of kindness, on his return from an errand to that place. The audience looked at each other in indignant disgust, and expressed in shrill tones their opinion of the baseness of the surveyors aforesaid.

Choy Susan, with her air of authority, strode forward and interrupted this. She touched the narrator on the shoulder, took him aside, and listened to a report of his mission. Then she returned to her companion, the stranger, and reported in turn : —

“ Ten Moon no got answer. No could find Mist’ Easte’by. Easte’by gone way now, down Miller’s Camp. They send letter if he no come back light away, bimeby, plitty click.”

The girl seemed to make an effort at first to repress strong feeling; then broke out with a despairing cry, “ Oh, what shall I do if he does not get my letter at all ? ”

The female interpreter and autocrat of the Chinese village looked at her in open surprise. An expression of shrewd insight succeeded this.

“ You want marry Mist’ Easte’by ? He you’ beau ? ” she asked in a tone of bluff friendliness.

“ Oh, Choy Susan, my father is going to make me marry another man ! He has gone down to Soledad now, to bring him back with him. When they return, it will have to be done. My father is a—a bishop of our faith, and he will marry us himself.”

“ Why you stay here, then ? ”

“ I got my father to leave me under pretense of sickness. I told him I could not travel any further in the jolting stage.”

“ So you want see East’by ? ”

“ It was by the merest accident I knew he was here. I saw his name in a newspaper as among the surveyors at this place.”

“ How you come know he ? ”

Choy Susan propounded her questions with a dry, almost inquisitorial air.

“ I used to know him when he was surveying down at Lehi, on the Utah Central, and afterwards at Salt Lake City. It is a very long time since I have seen him. He used to talk to me about — about — running away, and going to join his mother and sisters.”

“ So you goin’ run away, now ? ”

“ Oh, Choy Susan, how can I ? He has n’t asked me. He does n’t know I am here — I don’t want to marry anybody —ever. I only want somebody to sympathize with me — to know ”

She burst into hysterical sobs, and put her handkerchief to her face.

“ Finding you here, I — I thought I would get you to take a note to him,” she added : “ but he will never get it.”

“ Um ! ” commented Choy Susan. “ This new husbin, he Mormin, too ? Takes plenty more wife, alle same likee Chinaman ? ”

“ Yes, he is Mormon, too. They would not let me marry any other. They would call it my everlasting perdition, He is a relation of mine. I ’ve only seen him once — and he is old, and — and ugly — and I hate him.”

“ No good for woman to marry man what got plenty otha wife,” said Choy Susan, with a philosophic and final air, after a pause. “ My makee big mistake myself.”

“ Ah ? ”

The listener turned an attentive ear to sympathetic wisdom even from this rude source.

“ Yes. You heap good look, but heap good look can catch all same plenty bad time,” — a way of saying, no doubt, that beauty may be coupled with a hapless fate, which we know is true enough. “My know how it was myself,” she continued. “ My husbin name Hop Lee. I marry Hop Lee when I Jesus girl, down Stockton Street Mission. He Jesus boy, too.”

“ Oh, you were Christians?”

“ One time ; not now. I tellee you. Hop Lee he say, ‘You marry me: I got heap big store, heap money. You no work sewin’-m’chine; you catch plenty good time, plenty loaf. I no takee more wife.’ ”

“ He promised you not to marry again ? ”

“ He plomise.” The speaker closed an eye shrewdly ; then, reopened it. “ Bimeby plitty click I get sick, smallpock. He say, ‘You no good. Shut up ! I goin’ bling otha wife.’ He bling two more wife. They beatee me ; make work sewin’-m’chine all time, all time, likee slave.”

“ Poor Choy Susan ! ”

“ So one day I run away. Catch money and man clothes, catchee railroad, and come Salt Lake.”

“ And that was the time when you broke your arm, and I met you there ? ”

“ Yes, you helps, me. Bimeby I go Bodie ; then come here, get pardner, go fish, and bleep store.”

“ And what has become of Hop Lee ? ”

“He dead,” said Choy Susan contemptuously. “ I pray Jesus ’ligion first time makee Hop Lee die, but it no makee die. Then I pray China ’ligion makee die, and China ’ligion makee die, and both wife too, right away, plitty click. China joss much good. Jesus ’ligion no good.”

“ Oh, no, you must not say that! ” expostulated the girl ; but she was soon led back to her own affair, to which the Chinese interpreter returned.

“ When your father and other man comin’ back ? ” inquired the latter.

“ Inside of four or five days; and then it will have to be done.” The fair speaker whimpered tearfully again.

“ Oh, plenty much time ! plenty much time ! ” reassuringly. “ Easte’by he get letter, he come. You see ! ”

Yank Baldwin came up and interrupted, having now rescued his eccentric pony from the chaotic scramble, and secured him in a place of safety.

“ Crazy as a bedbug ! ” he now condescended to explain. “ He’s eat some o’ this here rattle-weed, or loco-weed, what grows in the pastures. It gives ’em kind o’ jim-jams. He goes like that every time he starts out. Never knows when to stop. He’d run himself to death if he had room. Run away once in a paymaster’s wagon, with seven thousand dollars under the seat. Was out all night, and found in the woods next mornin’, fast asleep on his feet.”

His new acquaintance made a polite pretense of listening, but was furtively edging off at the same time to take her departure.

“ He ’ll go down, some day, all of a heap, like the sun in the tropics,” said the man, following her up. “There’s folks like that, too, — always on the dead jump, always burnin’ the candle at both ends. I dunno but what I’ve been a good deal that way myself ’fore now. I’ve been thinkin’, though, that it’s ’bout time for me to settle down, and get me a good, spry, harnsome wife.”

He accompanied this speech with such a glance of bold admiration that his meaning was plainly evident.

Yank Baldwin’s theory was that of “ love at first sight,” and not confined to a special occasion, either. His stock of devotion lay very near the surface, and he made prompt demands upon it. It was told of him that he had once proposed to a waiter-girl at Frisco on her bringing him his second cup of coffee, and was only distanced by a companion who had already secured her after the first.

The stranger did not remain long to listen to his gallantries, but now tripped demurely away from the hamlet in the direction, of the Palace Boarding House, at no great distance.

“Who is she?” inquired Baldwin sententiously, looking after her.

“She one o’ them Mormins,—friend o’ mine over to Salt Lake.”

“ She ain’t no Mormon,” he said, in strong incredulity.

“She Mormon,— you hear me?” severely. “ Goin’ marry man with heap other wife all same like Chinaman.”

“ Go way ! ” He whistled softly.

“ You go way! ” returned Choy Susan, in her most rowdy manner.

“ Where ’s she stoppin’ ? ” the storekeeper inquired again, after a reflective pause.

“ Palace Boardin’ House.”

“ That’s where I take my meals myself, when I’m here from camp. I’m goin’ there now.”

He whistled several times more,— low whistles of peculiar meaning.

“ What was Ten Moon up to, down to camp ? ” he asked.

“ I guess he gone down see China cook there,” his informant responded nonchalantly. “ He goin’ back China day after to-morra. He take boat down there,” pointing to the junk on the bay ; “ then big boat on big water from Frisco.”

With this they returned again to the matter of the hands needed for the railroad. Yank Baldwin interrupted once more in the midst of it, however, as if dismissing, in a final way, an absurd idea that might have flashed through his brain.

“ No Mormon in mine ! Not any ! That ain’t what I ’m after. Spanish Luisa’s better ’n that, a mighty sight.”

It was necessary to see Yuen Wa, Choy Susan’s “ pardner,” about the negotiation. He had been a contractor for labor in his time, and still kept, more or less, the run of such matters. He was found at his place now in the stuffy little shop, full of curious budgets, specimens of the fine large avallonia shells found on the beach, dried avallonia meats and dried goose livers, opium pipes, sticks of India ink, silver jewelry, and packets of face powder. He sat behind the counter, a wizened little old man, with a thin, piping voice, reticent of speech, and more like one of his own idols than anything else. It was easy to see that he was a person of minor importance as compared with his more vigorous feminine associate.

“ All our available labor,” explained Yuen Wa in substance, “will be needed to-morrow and the day after for getting the Good Success and Golden Profits off to sea. After that, I must tell you, wo begin a season of ‘good’ days, a festival of a week or so, when nobody will work at anything. But after that” —•

“ Never mind,” replied Yank Baldwin. “ I ’ll go over and see them Eyetalians at Monterey. May be I kin get enough o’ them. If I can’t, I ’ll come and see you again. And may be they won’t be needed at all. It’s kinder onsartain.”

Upon that he was going away, when the Chinese woman picked up from the top of a box in a corner a couple of small English volumes.

“ B’long to she,” she said. “ Leavee here when she come see me, yest’d’y, I guess.”

“Whose? Hern?” said Yank Baldwin, standing beside her as she opened them. “ I’m goin’ back that way. I ’ll give ’em to her,” and he took, almost snatched, them from her.

One was a book of theological doctrine of the church of Mormon, or Latter-Day Saints; the other, a novel, of peculiarly affecting and tender love passages. In the former was inscribed, in a prim, small, girlish hand, a name — probably that of the owner — in full, as thus : Marcella Eudora Gilham, Deseret University, Salt Lake City. Under it was a date of about three years earlier, when she had no doubt been attendant upon that institution.

Chosen passages of doctrine were heavily underscored with pencil, as if they had been the subject of peculiar wrestling and study, or perhaps, again, in triumphant recognition of their force against error.

Yank Baldwin turned these volumes musingly, as he went along, — more than once nearly coming to grief over obstructions on the road, — and whistled softly to himself a great many times.

II.

THE PALACE BOARDING HOUSE,

The Palace Boarding House had once been an inn. It enjoyed a slight revival of prosperity at present from the recent burning down of the only hotel in the American town of Monterey, adjoining on the one hand, as did the Chinese village on the other. It lay at the intersection of cross-roads, leading up and down the coast and back into the country. Behind it were great dusky woods of a moss-hung pine and cypress peculiar to the place, and in front was the sea, palisaded by high cliffs.

The building was a large shingle edifice, in but shabby repair. Its title was not borne out by the facts, but was only a tribute from the florid imagination of the place.

At a corner of the shabby veranda creaked a signboard, reading

PALACE BOARDING HOUSE.

SQUARE MEALS, $1.00.

BY MRS. JANE McCURDY.

Some hens were scratching about the sterile door-yard, and a colt, his head triced up in a breaking-bridle, was wandering there, with a portentous air of feeling the indignity of his situation.

Yank Baldwin was late at dinner, and it happened that his new acquaintance, Miss Marcella Eudora Gilham, was the only guest with him at table, He was so impressed anew that he forgot for some time to give her back her books. He paused at times with his fork half raised to his mouth, in admiration. She had made some little new adjustments to her toilette. Her hair was smoother than before. He contrasted her with the somewhat frowzy style of Spanish Luisa, of Monterey ; and though the raven tresses, the heavy brows, and the soft and melting mouth of this latter were of genuine attraction, he felt the contrast as most unfavorable to her memory.

Finally he bethought him of the recovered books, and made various other ingratiating advances, but without notable success.

“ If she wa’n’t Mormon, I don’t s’pose I could expect her to look at the same side o’ the road I was on,’’ he thought.

Mrs. Jane McCurdy, the landlady, now came in from her labors in the kitchen to her own dinner.

“Mr. Bald’in, he’s connected with the new railroad,” she said to Marcella, by way of aiding to bring about a sociable feeling between the two.

“ My son, he ’s allers follered firin’, on the railroad, too, or else teamin’, one. I dunno just what is become of him now,” she continued, foraging about and making judicious selections among the lukewarm viands.

It seemed as if Marcella regarded the storekeeper with an increase of interest after this. She took a certain meditative way of looking at him, and talked amiably on general topics.

“ Somebody was say in’ she was a Mormon,” suggested Yank Baldwin to the landlady, when the girl had left the room.

“ I expect she is,” sighed that hardworked woman in a weary way.

“ Josephite, then, most likely ? I’ve seen Josephites down San Barnardino way. They ain’t no great different from other folks.”

“ No, I expect she’s one o’ the reglar uns.”

“ Not solid Mormon ? ”

“ Solid,” said Mrs. McCurdy, shutting out the last ray of hope, as she peeled a cold boiled potato.

Yank Baldwin groaned mentally.

“ Her father, he’s a kind o’ bishop, or apostle, among’em, I guess,” went on the landlady in a gossiping way ; “ round this way to visit among the brethren and do a stroke o’ business too in introducin’ goods. I see his -cards with Zion’s Cooppyrative Bazaar on ’em, and a pile o’ tracts on religion, in his room. They went over to sell some things to the China stores the day they came, and the girl run acrost Choy Susan, who, it ’pears, site knew of old.”

“ So I hear.”

“There’s a kind o’ scatterin’ of the brethren round through here, I understand, on account o’ some bein’ left after the Mexikin war, and they ’re formin’ new settlements, too. They say they’re a-goin’ to settle all over everything after a while.”

“ Sho ! ” said Yank Baldwin.

“ I’ve had consid’rable many of ’em stop with me. Fact is, I had a sister among ’em oncet. They roped her in, some way, down in Illinois, in early times. She used to see hull quires of angils ; I dumio hut what ’t was reams.”

“ Well, how ’s business ? ” inquired the storekeeper, affecting a brisk air as he put on his wide slouch hat, after finishing his meal.

“ You know of any good China cook ? ” returned the landlady, answering this question with another. ‘Ten Moon, he ’s goin’ away, goin’ back to his own country, and I’ve got to have somebody else. Them camp-meetin’ folks ’ll be down this way, too, pretty quick, to open up at Pacific Grove, and that allers makes consid’rable extra entin’. Rev. Samyil Snow has writ. He gin’rally writes to let me know they ’re comin’.”

“ You better hustle round lively, then,” said Baldwin. “ The head o’ construction ’s goin’ to be moved up this way, from Sloan’s Camp. I should n’t wonder if we started in three or four days. That ’ll make more square meals for you.”

Marcella Gilham was waiting for him on the veranda, as he came out. She talked awhile on general matters ; then asked as if by the way, —

“ Oh, are you acquainted with a young man on the railroad named Rufus D. Easterby ? ”

“What, Rufe ? Rufus D? I should say so.”

“ He is a chain-man, with the surveyors.”

“He ain’t no chain-man now. He’s got to be transit-man now, at seventyfive dollars a month and found. Picked it up himself. Picks up everything. You know him ? ”

“ I have met him,” she replied evasively.

“Well, you’ve met a bang-up smart feller, and a good un, — that’s all I’ve got to say. He’s bound to be division engineer himself ’fore a great while, is Rufus.”

“ If you happen to see him, perhaps you will mention that you have seen me here.”

“ O’ course I will; o’ course I ’ll mention it. He often comes iuto my tent of an evening and chins. He’s give me advice more ‘n once that I ’ve follered out and made money on it.”

Marcella was very gracious, at considerable length, to the storekeeper. As he mounted to ride off she said,—

“ I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again.”

Then she turned away, and said to herself mournfully, “ If I have made a sufficiently good impression, and the letter should miscarry, this man may still bring me news of him.”

“Well, be good to yourself!” said Yank Baldwin, galloping away on his queer pony, who had no terrors for him. He was immensely flattered by her favor.

“ Hopes she ’ll have the pleasure o’ seein’ me again, does she ? ” he soliloquized. “ Pity, her bein’ a Mormon. Should n’t wonder, now, if I could convert that there girl over, if I was a mind to, as easy as rollin’ off a log.”

He repeated many times more in the course of that evening, “Pity, her bein’ Mormon, ain’t it ? ” together with the reflection about converting her. Converting her to what? Yank Baldwin’s own theological convictions would have been extremely hard to determine.

He wandered in an aimless way about his store, where he had a stock of overalls, cowhide boots, blankets, tin cups, powder and shot, kerosene, and bags of meal and potatoes, distributed on the ground and upon a rude counter and shelves. The usual visitors came in, and sat around a barrel in the centre.

The inspiration suddenly took him that he might as well move his store on the morrow, and not wait. He should be near her and would have leisure in the few days before the rest of the camp should follow to amply cultivate her acquaintance. Some Indians, a mongrel, beggarly set of the neighborhood, came in to buy stove-blacking. They were using it now as a choice article of facepaint; and the transaction, almost the only one of the evening, completed his readiness to go.

“ No use o’ stayin’ here; there ain’t no business doin’,” he said, addressing a couple of young fellows who had hauled supplies into camp, and had a team there vacant. “ Say, young roosters ! what ’ll you take, to move me and fixtures complete up to the new place, right away to-morrer ? ”

The teamsters thus addressed named a price.

“ You don’t want the job,” he said curtly, upon hearing it.

“ The feed of the horses will cost so much,” they argued.

“ No livin’ horses can eat so much,” he returned.

“ The tent alone will make one load.”

“ No, it won’t make not half a load.”

“It will take a couple of days to do it.”

“ Why, you ’ll have it all done by tomorrer noon.”

The “ young roosters ” united in a cry of indignation.

“ Oh, I mean if you work,” said the storekeeper contemptuously ; “ and when I say work, I don’t mean dawdlin’ and goin’ to sleep over it, the way you do for the railroad, either.”

The spectators took sides for and against in the argument. The teamsters went outside the tent and laid their heads together confidentially, and returned with a new price. This in its turn was rejected, and the negotiation seemed wholly at an end.

“ Well, I ’ll raise you the five dollars,” said Yank Baldwin finally, infusing as much superciliousness as possible into his tone. “ But see you get started at daybreak, d’ ye understand ? And don’t you forget it ! ”

He felt that feminine influence — and not for the first time, either — had disabled him in a business transaction which, if left unbiased, he should have brought to a much more advantageous issue.

Marcella hovered near, on his arrival at the new site with his second load of effects, and spoke with him. As he volunteered nothing about Easterby, she came to the point directly.

“ No, I hain’t seen him,” said the new-comer. “Fact is, he’s off somewheres. I guess he ’ll be back ’fore a great while. A letter came for him yest’d’y, too, and is waitin’ for him, unless they’ve sent it on.”

The girl turned away to hide her despair.

Whether aroused by the movement of its storekeeper or not, it is certain that the whole of Sloan’s Camp also got in motion that day, in advance of its original intention. By nightfall a number of tents were pitched, and the head of construction was definitely transferred to the new location.

It was a charming little steep valley, traversed by a brook, amid embowering woods. The rattle of the powder blasts in the adjoining canyon already began to resound there, as the new railroad came rapidly on.

Yank Baldwin, as soon as installed, began his court to Marcella. He invited her down to camp after supper, to witness the moons of Jupiter (said to be of a notable clearness just then) through the glass of the surveyors’ transit. She accepted, taking Mrs. McCurdy, however, for fuller companionship. Baldwin had brought her no news that day; perhaps she might happen upon some at camp. Perhaps, even, — but that was too good to be true,—Easterby might have arrived himself.

The tents glowed translucent, like large lanterns, in the dusk; the noise of the clear brook smote musically on the ear ; the stars peeped over the margin of the valley, and Jupiter was in fact exceptionally brilliant. The engineer, the rod-man, the two chain-men, the axe man, and others had come, and there was a very polite man temporarily in charge of the transit instrument. But Easterby had not arrived, nor did the timid inquiries which alone the visitor dared propound bring definite information about him, if indeed there Were any to be had.

She bore up, however. On the return she artfully drew out Yank Baldwin on the subject of railroad constructors and their habits, and especially on surveyors.

“Are they usually married ? ” she inquired. “ Is Mr. Easterby, for instance ? ”

“If not, have they often — sweethearts? Has Easterby ? ”

“ I should n’t wonder if he’d been in love afore now, or may be is yet,” explained her informant, “in some such way as to take his mind off the girls. I ‘ve kinder thought so. He don’t take no shine to ’em at all.— Why? Was you particular interested in him?” he broke off sharply, perhaps inspired with a sudden suspicion.

“ Oh, not at all. I — only it is easier to talk about some one we both know ; that is all.”

The storekeeper even ventured into the “ settiu’-room ” of the Palace Boarding House, though not greatly at home in such places, and the interview was prolonged. The session there that night was later than usual. Ten Moon, the departing cook, was to “set a table to the devil ” for a favorable journey, and there was a desire on the part of some to witness it. The table was in fact set out, with the proper allowance of rice, rice-brandy, roast fowl, and sweetmeats,

Marcella, meantime, whether through desire for distraction in her anxieties, or to continue the chance of new discoveries, brought forth a photograph album to show her visitor.

“ My brother, — my sister,” she said, gravely pointing out in it one young face after another, with much dissimilarity of looks.

“ Large fambly ! ” commented Yank Baldwin dryly.

He was burning to accost the subject of her creed, and make a beginning of the conversion which he believed his personal influence would render so easy.

She let fall inadvertently some expression about the “ celestial marriage.” This was his opportunity.

“ Celestyil humbug ! ” he broke out. “You ain’t one o’ them that believes in lettin’ a husband have ’bout forty-’leven other wives, are you ? ”

The girl sighed heavily.

“You ought to tie up to some good, strong, likely feller that ’ud look out for you, and nobody else,” he continued.

Marcella Eudora Gilham sighed more heavily than before. The strange thing was that she showed no resentment.

“ What does it say in these here novils?” bringing his hand down on the one he had returned to her the day before. “ Why, they show just two, and no more, a-lovin’ each other for keeps ; a-stickin’ to each other through thick and thin, and nobody else; a-havin’ no end o’ trouble, but comin’ out all right in the wind-up.”

Marcella looked at the book; then took it up herself, affectionately, as if mindful of certain passages that may have been an influence in her life. But she said, —

“ I suppose I ought not to read novels. Our Book of Nephi calls them ‘ the vain imaginations and pride of the children of men.’ ”

“ Book of ” — began her exhorter in disgust. “ Well, I can’t say I’ve seen much o’ your kind o’ folks myself, but I know all about ’em from Rufe Easterby. He’s ben there and seen the whole thing. He says the women is the wust,”

“ Did he say that ? ” exclaimed Marcella, starting now with warm indignation.

“ He says they ’re the biggest fools that ever was heard of,” pursued Yank Baldwin imperturbably. His best point was not refinement, either of argument or of speech. “ The head men preaches to ’em that it ’s their duty to git their own livin’; and they take it all in, and grub their fingers off. The thing can be run ad liberty that way, without its costin’ the men a cent.”

Perhaps there reëchoed through the listener’s brain at this point the sonorous words of sermons she had heard preached in the Tabernacle :

“ In that day seven women will plead with one man to take them as wives, promising to eat their own bread and wear their own apparel, if he will only consent for them to be called by his name.”

“ The women even makes the men take more wives when they was n’t goin’ to,” continued Yank Baldwin. “ The poor benighted creeturs thinks all hands ’ll git a higher place in heaven. Oh, they ’re too cute for anything, them sly old Mormon foxes ! ”

With this onslaught Yank Baldwin was about to depart in triumph, considering that the successful end of his crusade could not now be far distant; but Marcella let fall an inoffensive-seeming remark, which checked him in full career.

“ The greatest men of ancient times,” she said, “ those of the Bible, had many wives at once.”

“ They did n’t ? ”

She brought him the Scriptures, and showed him the cases of Abraham, Jacob, David, and other of the famous polygamists.

It was news to Yank Baldwin, as very much more in the sacred books would also have been. He felt himself getting beyond his depth, and went off in a dazed way. He recalled clearly, however, how charmingly the color came and went in her complexion as they argued. Dusky Spanish Luisa, of the raven hair and melting mouth, had vanished completely out of sight.

“Maybe Mormon ain’t no such great difference from Spanish, any way,” he mused, making provision in case that the conversion might not succeed. “ I s’pose it could n’t do any great hurt, her belongin’ to ’em.”

III.

THE SAILING OF THE GOOD SUCCESS AND GOLDEN PROFITS.

As there was no news for the Mormon girl from any source, on the following morning, and the time for action upon her impending fate was growing perilously short, she could not forbear approaching the storekeeper on the subject of Easterby again.

“ The fact is,” now said this person, “he’s ben sent down the line to stave off a strike among some Mexican laborers, and I ben seein’ if I could help git some extry hands here in case they was needed. They may strike, and may not. It’s a secret, and we did n’t want nothin’ said about it till we see how it was all a-comin’ out.”

“ And why was he sent ? He is a surveyor.”

“ Well, he’s picked up their lingo some way, and he’s got a takin’ way with him. If he could n’t do it, nobody could.”

She hurried with this statement to Choy Susan, in the Chinese village. She was in utter despair, believing now that Easterby would not come at all, would not be found. And even if he were found, what would he think of her? Oh, surely, now nothing could be done! The Chinawoman tried again to comfort her.

“ You got more money ? ” she said. “ Ten Moon no can go, but send one more time messagy, and bling light away back.”

“ Oh, Choy Susan, I have no more money,” and she let her hand fall helplessly on her pocket.

“All lite!” said Choy Susan, and she summoned Qum Tock, a bright, intelligent boy, swift of foot, and sent him off on her own account, with instructions to find Rufus Easterby at all hazards, and bring him back if it were a possible thing. The boy’s employer, Mow the emblem-maker, came presently to complain on account of the boy’s being taken from his work ; but Choy Susan opened her batteries of invective upon him with excellent effect, using English for the greater impressiveness.

“ Shut up ! ” she said. “ Git out ! Hire some hall! Don’t you forget how ! ” Upon which Mow the emblemmaker retired, totally discomfited.

Yank Baldwin came to Choy Susan the same morning, to ask her “ to speak a good word ” for him with Marcella. This point had he now reached in his going away, as it were, after the woman of Moab. He offered a considerable reward if he should succeed by her aid. She showed no great surprise at the proposition.

“ All lite ! ” she answered ; “ but you plomise me you say nothin’ ’bout to she till I fix. See ? ”

To this he assented. He fervently met once more Marcella herself. She was wandering disconsolately on the cliffs, and he joined her. They sat a while at a charming point where old trees of gnarled roots gripped the rock, and the spray dashed up into the air from curious caverns below. Thence they went down to the beach. There were curious large shells, one seaweed red as coral, and another of a single long smooth stem, coiled like a huge whip or serpent. Gulls and pelicans hovered above a neighboring reef in chattering conventions.

In front the blue water of the bay stretched out to meet the illimitable ocean. Across it came a sail-boat from the direction of Santa Cruz. Looking towards the Chinese village, they could see that the junk, lately arrived, was no longer moored off shore, but had drawn up alongside a small pier, and was the centre of an active bustle of departure.

Yank Baldwin adhered in the main to his agreement with Choy Susan. He could not forbear throwing in, however, some few words concerning himself and prospects by way of commending himself to favor.

“There’s other bisnisses I could go into, if I was a mind to, more settled down like,” lie Said. “ I ’ve sometimes thought o’ startin’ a fruit drier and cannery. There’s big money in it. Or I would n’t wonder if I could even pick up surveyin’, if that was wanted, same as Easterby. There’s your thermomyter for takin’ levils, and so on ; then you have your baromyler for seein’ how hot it is, you know.”

Marcella showed no great interest in this. She was feverishly excited; in need of movement, distraction, forgetfulness. She wished to go back to the Chinese village, to witness the sailing of the junk. Her cavalier wondered at her taste, but offered her such explanations of things there as he could ; few of them, it is to be feared, accurate, and none of them free from race prejudice.

“It’s no place for a feller to saloon his girl,” said he, in contempt. “ I don’t see what’s the use o’ comin’.”

There was a plentiful population abroad now. Many had stayed at home from the fishing-grounds, and chosen to begin, with the day, the festal season opening on the morrow. It was a time favorable for trade, and the merchants burned in their interiors old clothes and mock money, to bring custom and keep away that class of shoppers who come only to price things, and not to buy.

A moral drama would be begun at the little theatre that evening. The fane of Hop Wo — to which an inscription, for the benefit of strangers, directed, “ By This Way Go Up Stairs ” — was freshly adorned. The deity Tien How, propitious to sailors, was set out upon the flat bowlder in place of the usual joss, and a pig, roasted whole and adorned with ribbons and gilt papers, lay before her. In the restaurant, dusky with smoke, games of dominoes, fan-tan, and blowing the fist were in progress.

“ Yet!” (one) cried the players in this latter, shrilly, throwing out fingers to correspond. “Two!” “Three!” “ Four ! ” “ Eng ! ” “ Look ! ” “ Tak! ” “ What! ! ” “ Gue ! ! ! ” “ Skip ! ! ! ! ”

They rose in the end to a climax of uproar that drowned for the moment the monotonous whine of Ah Wai’s fiddle and the clack of Chin Moy’s ebony sticks on an ebony block.

Our couple came to where the schoolmaster was teaching some school-children to kow-tow decorously before Tien How. The quaint, doll-like figures, in swaddling-robes of green, red, and yellow, put their small hands together and bowed till their foreheads well-nigh touched the ground. The school-master, a man not without courtliness, smiled benevolently at our friends, and expended upon them his only English speech, “ Good-by ! ”

Choy Susan came by, and explained to them, in substance, — stopping as she bustled down to the junk, for she was one of the most active with bills of lading and the like in preparing it for sea, — that he was a person rather above his station here. He was one who said philosophically, —

“It is better to be honored among the small than despised among the great.”

She might have told, too, how he had in his cabin the Ju-pieu, or dictionary of twenty-six thousand characters. He read in the Chi Kang, the national book of poetry, in which heroines are described, soft as the willow seen through the mists of spring, and with brows as arching and delicate as the opening willow leaf. He taught the three thousand proprieties, and how it is polite to offer things, but more polite to refuse; and how the first person must never be used in speech, but only terms of deference and eulogy to the auditor instead.

But now the final moment had come for the junk to take her departure. The gallant Good Success and Golden Profits began to cast off her lines. The peak of her mainsail was hauled up. A pennant was loosed from her masthead, with the inscription,—

“ May this bark brave the storms of a thousand years! ”

Our couple found a favorable lookout point on the brow of a rise of ground. They saw two merchants embark, neither of whom would trust the other with the control of a venture they had in common ; hence both were going. Lastly came Ten Moon, hurrying from a final trip to the Palace Boarding House for his effects, and, embracing friends along the way, tumbled precipitately on board.

The Good Success and Golden Profits was a vessel of perhaps fifty feet in length by fifteen in the beam. She had a great rudder, with carven tiller, which served partly as a keel, her actual keel being of but small dimensions. Her motive power was a principal sail, lateen-shaped, with a jib or foresail, both braced with reefing-poles, so that they lay flat to the breeze instead of bellying. It might be expected that such a craft would be fairly good before a wind, but would not tack easily.

A fusillade of crackers and revolver shots rattled briskly before the shrine of Tien How, and last fervent wishes were breathed. A new pennant, with the lucky Yin and Yang, the male and female principle, was run up on the junk. She drifted off from shore. Her hardy skipper raised aloft three cups of wine of rice, and poured a libation on the deck. Then he took in his hands a fowl, kow-towed thrice, reverently, cut off its head, and scattered the blood on silvered papers of inscriptions before him. His sailors, assisting in this nautical manœuvre, seized upon these papers, and ran with all haste to affix them to different parts of the ship.

There were already painted on each side the prow an open eye to spy out dangers ahead, and on the stern the phœnix, Foong, sitting on a rock and defying storms. With all this, if there were now no Jonah-like person on board to bring ill-fortune, it might be expected that the winds and waves, and especially the wild Sui Tow Foong, or devil’s head-winds, were appeased in advance, and a prosperous voyage insured.

All at once a loud outcry went up. Luckless Ten Moon, not yet, as it seemed, at the end of his misadventures, was in the way of one of the sailors running to affix an inscription to his quarters. There was a collision. The ex-cook toppled over the gunwale and fell into the sea.

But a more singular thing happened. The outcry abated, and not a hand was raised in assistance. From both sea and shore his countrymen looked on in apathy at his fate. The sail-boat from Santa Cruz, which appeared to carry a load of tent apparatus, was now in the vicinity. She changed her course, — and there was a kind of vicious snap in the suddenness of the change, — and ran down to the spot, but she was not near enough to be of any avail.

The man was choking, struggling, sinking ; he would surely drown.

Yank Baldwin bolted, without a word, from the side of Marcella, ran down to the pier, and leaped off. He swam with vigorous strokes to the drowning man, soon had him by the collar, and dragged him unceremoniously ashore.

There was a clamor of a different kind during this performance. It seemed to have rage, expostulation, and lugubrious wailings in it; and when the rescuer reached shore it almost looked as if he were going to be the victim of personal violence.

“ I Hang ’em ! ” said he, returning presently to Marcella. “ I thought first they was going to mob me. A sick way of showin’ gratitude they’ve got! ”

“ They don’t believe in saving persons from drowning,” she replied.

“ They don’t ? ”

“ No. They think there are wandering spirits on the lookout to drag such persons under, and that they revenge themselves on those who balk them in their purpose.”

Choy Susan had been with her in the meau time, and made her this explanation hastily, in connection with another, which confused her in presence of Yank Baldwin. He, too, had learned that Choy Susan had spoken the promised word, but did not know its definite result.

Down below, the sail-boat loaded with tent equipage touched shore, and a ministerial-looking man leaped out of it. He raised his hands in prayer and repulsion at the superstitious indifference to a human life he had witnessed, then seized upon Choy Susan and drew her aside. She explained, when he had reembarked, and some time later to Marcella, that it was the Reverend Samuel Snow.

“ He talkee my he Jesus woman and go back Stockton Stleet Mission. My ask him buy lottely tickets,” she said, in a hardened way. *

The rescued Ten Moon was rowed out in a small boat, and grudgingly received on the deck from which he had fallen. The junk then sailed away, and was slow in disappearing over the horizon. She would cruise homeward along the hundred miles of intervening coast, enter at the Golden Gate, unload at Yslas Creek, and make her next trip probably to the shrimpers at San Bruno Point, twenty miles down San Francisco Bay.

IV.

VACILLATIONS OF YANK BALDWIN.

“ Oh, that’s what they think, is it ? ” said Yank Baldwin, continuing his interview with the engaging Marcella Eudora Gillam. “ Howsumdever, it don’t make no difference to me what they think. I’d see the hull bang of ’em at the bottom of the Red Sea, so fur as I’m concerned. I done it just for one thing. Do you want to know what that is ? ”

Marcella did not ask for information on the point; she feared she knew too well already ; but this discretion did not avail her.

“ I want to marry you,” he said. “ Choy Susan ’s broke it to you. Bein’ as you took a notion to look at ’em as feller creeturs. and so on, and as the rest was so skulkin’ mean, I thought I’d haul him out to please you. Now, what do you say ? Will you have me ?”

He stood before her in his wet apparel, streams of water running down and forming in pools about his feet, as if this were the most propitious of aspects for a wooer.

“Oh, I—I can’t,” she replied, timidly.

“ You can’t ? Why not ? I ain’t a-goin’ to say nothin’ agin your folks. I’ve give that up. You was brought up so, and can’t help it, I s’pose.”

“ My father would n’t let me marry anybody who was not — a Mormon — one of the Saints,” replied the girl, taking quite a different ground from that which he so complacently adopted.

“ Saints be blowed ! There ain’t no saints about it. Joe Smith, what founded ’em, was a lazy money-digger, that’s all. Oh, Easterby’s told me all about it, and I know. He could n’t make out a livin’, Smith could n’t, so he pretended he’d found gold plates with hydroglyphics on ’em. How could he ever ha’ read any gold plates, s’pose be had found ’em ? ”

“ The Urim and Thummim, set in silver bows, were deposited with them in the hill of Cumorah, and by the aid of these he was able to translate them.”

The countenance and tone of the young woman expressed perhaps a rapt devotion to her creed, yet a skeptical observer might have thought that he discerned a trace of hypocrisy in it all.

“ Oh, yes, he was a sweet one, Joe was!” continued Yank Baldwin, suffering himself to be led away in heated sarcasm into a side issue. “ I s’pose he got all them there revelashins straight from heaven, too. He used to come down every mornin’ with things fixed just as he wanted. Got one revelashin tellin’ his regular wife to shut up and not say nothin’ when he took a lot more, or she’d be cut off into everlastin’ fire and brimstun.”

“ Verily a commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith. . . . But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord,” said Marcella, quoting the exact words of the text piously.

“ He got a one-horse school-master, old Oliver Cowdery, and a one-horse lawyer, old Sidney Rigdon, to help him.”

“ Oh, you ought to go right home and get dry clothes. You will catch your death ! ” cried the girl, directing her attention, as for the first time, to his condition, and endeavoring thus to create a diversion.

“ Never mind about that ! That’s all right,” he responded morosely, putting up a hand to wring further moisture from his lank locks. “ As I was a-sayin’, they ’re all a set o’ first-class frauds.”

“Joseph and Hyrum were martyred in Carthage jail, and there were many more who suffered for the faith.”

Still the keen observer would have fancied in the fair devotee a certain evasion. Was she possibly fending off with her doctrines a suitor with whom it was not policy to quarrel outright ?

“ Oh, what’s the use o’ argying ?’ now broke out this latter in a final way. “ You kin b’long to ’em, if you want to. I s’pose your belongin’ can’t do no great hurt. But you don’t mean to say that you won’t have me unless I jine ’em, too ? ”

The object of his ardor bowed her head distinctly, but in a sorrowful way, as if this were indeed her ultimate conclusion.

“ Oh, that’s just a little too much ! ” cried the storekeeper, starting off indignantly. “ That settles it. You don’t look like it, but I s’pose it’s been grimed into you, and you can’t help it. — So long! ”

And he tramped away in high dudgeon, to put himself into dry clothing.

He hovered about the Palace Boarding House again towards evening, preserving a far-off, resentful air towards Marcella. He happened to be in her presence when a communication was handed her by a messenger, Qum Tock. She clapped her hands in rapture upon receipt of it and cried, —

“ Oh, he is coming ! he is coming! ”

“ Who ’s coming ? ” inquired the storekeeper, startled into the involuntary question.

“ Oh — a — that is — my father,” she answered, recalled to her self-possession.

But it was curious that the message, if from her father, should have been brought by Quin Tock, who came from Choy Susan.

After this circumstance, Marcella Gilham began to act towards Baldwin in a totally different manner. She was gay, loquacious, and treated him with a delightful coquetry.

The honest storekeeper, enraptured beyond all control, took the landlady, Mrs. McCurdy, aside, and said to her,— Say ! borrer some o’ those there doctrine books o’ hers for me, will you ? ”

Mrs. McCurdy obligingly borrowed them for him, taking them without asking permission, aud he put them under his and and trudged away to his tent.

When the shades of evening had fully fallen, that same day, a bronzed young man, alert of movement, short, stout, with a good round head and a bright eye, hurried into camp, threw off a canvas working-suit he wore, spruced up, and emerged from his tent again almost immediately. As he was coming out, he was saluted by Yank Baldwin, who had caught sight of him, with —

“ Hay, Easterby, old man ! Back again? What’s the news ? ”

“ The Mexicans are quieted down. They ’re not going to strike. And I’ve got a leave of absence and raise of pay.”

“ Good enough! I’m glad of it. Say ! ” approaching nearer, confidentially, “ you ’re the one I ben a-waitin’ for. I want a little advice. There’s a Mormon gal here what ” —

“Not now ! not now, old man ! Can’t stop now, Yank. I’ve got business to attend to on the instant. See you later.”

The young surveyor threw this back over his shoulder in a cheery voice, and was off without stopping for further parley.

Had the storekeeper followed instead of returning, as he did, to his tent to pore over the strange books of doctrine, he would have seen him joined by Marcella at the Palace Boarding House, and the two steal discreetly away toward the cliffs. He would have seen them find a sheltered seat there, just over the verge, screened by cedar boughs. He would have heard them set to work to talk of earlier times ; of a correspondence that had been interrupted, misunderstandings that had arisen, He would have heard argument then of a theological sort, and might have judged from a plaintive tone of the girl that she was struggling anew with old doubts and fears, once perhaps happily resolved.

“ Oh, I have read, I have thought,” she said. “ Can you be so sure? Can the sufferings of all of our people, the blood of martyrs, been in vain ? ”

“ Blood of martyrs,” replied the young man, “ has been shed for every absurdity under the sun. We are left to grope in darkness, for the most part, — Heaven help us; but we have our little spark of reason, and it must save us at least from gross impostures.”

The night was dark in the absence of a moon, but the stars cast a pale radiance down upon the water. The milky way, scattered like breadths of daisies in a pasture, stretched from horizon to zenith and down again. The young girl said, turning a fair face up to it from below the cedar boughs. —

“ When worlds are so plentiful as that, of what importance are we ? How can it make any conceivable difference what we think, or do, or are ?”

Her companion answered, holding her hand in both of his, —

“ Those worlds are so far off, cold and uncertain, and we are here and warm and living, and we want our happiness.”

None of this, however, Yank Baldwin saw or heard, wrestling in his tent as he was till well-nigh morning over uncouth doctrinal problems.

The pair on the cliffs heard the stage come in with a boom and rattle. When, they parted, in the friendly obscurity of a thicket by the Palace Boarding House, Marcella turned to go within and Easterby back to his tent.

A door opened, letting out a bright light; and a rusty-looking man, with beard and shaven upper lip, stepped forth upon the veranda, clearly revealed in it.

“ Father ! ” exclaimed the girl, with a frightened intonation. “ You are back so soon ? ”

“ Yes; Erastus and I have come. ’Rastus did n’t want to wait no longer. The ceremony ‘d better be to-morrow noon. I feel to rejoice that you ’re going to have such a good husband. Wa’n’t that somebody with you, just now ? ” said the Mormon father.

He took his daughter by the arm ; they disappeared within, and the door closed upon them.

Rufus Easterby overheard. With the alert, energetic manner characteristic of him he altered his course, and turned now towards the abode of Choy Susan. It was not yet so late that she could not be aroused ; he found her, and the two held significant conference together.

A morning of fog, such as is common on the coast, succeeded the starry night. Fog dragged in the short grass, dripped from the tree branches, shut out the water, veiled the cliffs, and gave the hamlets a mysterious looming outline.

The day was long in coming. At breakfast-time a note was brought to Marcella, with whose own mood the gloom was well in keeping. The missive was from Choy Susan, in a peculiar handwriting that she had learned at the Stockton Street Mission. Marcella showed it freely to the Mormon father and the Mormon lover, “ Erastus,” another rusty-looking man, of the same general pattern.

“ Choy Susan wants me to come over, if I can,” she said. “ She thinks she will buy some goods of us, if I will explain them a little more. She — wants me to — come alone.”

The Mormon father looked inquiringly at the Mormon lover. The latter returned a glance inclining to suspicion. But there really was no good reason for objection, and the passion for gain was strong in both of them.

“ You can go, my daughter,” said the father; “but be brief! You know what is to be done at noon.”

Ah, yes, Marcella Eudora Gilham woefully remembered her pressing appointment for that hour.

Yank Baldwin, the storekeeper, had overslept himself that morning, after his long vigil. He hurried to find Mr. Easterby at once he was awake, but the latter was not in his tent.

“ Never mind, then ! ” said the storekeeper. “ I don’t want no advisin’ now.”

He had the air of a man with a purpose inflexibly fixed.

He inquired at the Palace Boarding House for Marcella. Mrs. McCurdy told him that she had gone to the Chinese village, and her object. He directed himself thither thereupon with all expedition.

The Mormon father also, as it happened, heard this inquiry, and observed its manner. He chose to identify Yank Baldwin with the man he had seen with his daughter the night before. She had been gone well-nigh an hour, and should have returned. He counseled with Erastus. The two put their heads together, and in growing apprehension set out in pursuit.

As Yank Baldwin went along, with firm front and beating heart, he fanned his purpose with muttered words.

“Oh, I’ll jine ’em,” he said. “It comes high, but I ’ll do it. I ’ll jine ’em and git her, if I bust.”

The enamored storekeeper had gone over to the Moabitish woman, horse, foot, artillery, and camp equipage, and was ready to embrace her faith. From time to time, languid airs drove back the smoke-like mist from the edge of the water, and showed a single milk-white breaker coming lazily in, and the gulls and pelicans standing motionless on wet films of the beach, in which their shapes were reflected. Then it swept down again, and swallowed up alike Yank Baldwin and the Mormon parent and suitor following after.

In the Chinese village, that morning, there was rumor of something unusual afloat. Choy Susan had been seen to go at an early hour to the camp-meeting ground of Pacific Grove. She was dressed in her gala costume. She wore a wide-sleeved tunic of dark blue silk, and her earrings were large hoops of gold and malachite. Her black hair was smoothly oiled, and held up in loops by filigreed gold pins.

She returned presently, and soon afterward came the Reverend Samuel Snow, and entered her cabin. It was rumored with dread that she was to go back to the Christian faith, as the result of yesterday’s conference with the minister. The girl, Marcella, who arrived and entered in her turn, was no doubt to be a witness to the ceremony. The young man, Easterby, was probably another.

Excitement grew apace. Heads were laid together; then a crowd assembled around Choy Susan’s closed door. The morose parrot, Tong, poured out upon these his choicest vocabulary of abuse.

Yank Baldwin pushed his way hastily through, reached and knocked at the door. It was not opened immediately, and he knocked again. Marcella herself set it ajar with a peculiarly shy and blushing manner. The moment he saw her he began impetuously, —

“ I ’ll jine. I ’ll b’long. You kin have it all your own way. I ” —

But further speech seemed to stick in his throat. The door was thrown widely open. Beside Miss Marcella Eudora Gilhnm appeared, with smiling face, Rufus D. Easterby. Behind him appeared the Rev. Samuel Snow, and behind the Rev. Samuel Snow, Choy Susan. All had a significant air. Something unusual had certainly happened.

“ My wife, old man ! ” exclaimed Easterby, pulling him socially forward.

“ Holy smoke ! ” cried the astounded storekeeper. “ You hain’t turned Mormon ? ”

“ Not in the least. She’s as good a Gentile as any of us. She had to keep quiet a bit, that’s all.”

“ Well, carry me out, and put me away in some orphin asylum I ” said Yank Baldwin, in utter collapse. He directed upon the delusive fair one, all of whose duplicity was at last exposed, a glance of meaning too deep for words.

“ It’s all Choy Susan’s doing,” said Easterby, extending a friendly hand to the interpreter.

“ And we hope Choy Susan will come and live with us, when we settle down,” added Marcella sweetly, not unwilling perhaps to withdraw attention from the more exciting issue.

Puffing out of the fog at the same moment came a Mormon father and Mormon lover, with presage of ill written on their faces.

William Henry Bishop.