particle of proof she had she would carefully sift. The inherent justice of the woman triumphed even over her jealousy. Her husband had a right to an impartial hearing. He should have it. Hester had a right to an unbiased statement of her case. She should have it. All the more so that she, a woman, stood at the bar before a woman. Step by step, dispassionately, she went over it all, putting into the scale every scrap of real evidence, every atom of truth, and setting over against it every improbability, every extenuating circumstance, every doubt; impassively balancing the one against the other. After all, what case was there against husband-or friend? She had not been a woman prone to jump at hasty and groundless conclusions. Even in her chagrin and mortification, she found herself reflecting that all her suffering was built upon the halfmischievous, half-malicious conversation of a village gossip. A few broad insinuations, a few sly innuendoes, a significant laughthese had been the basis of her fears. The one single fact she could separate from all else was that the weaver's wife had met Hester Holland and Squire Lyscombe, in a ramble by the "Branch," as she called the stream hurrying riverward near their home.

Diana rearranged her tumbled hair, bathed her aching head, and prepared to meet her husband as usual at tea. She would at least suspend judgment until some more tangible proof should be forthcoming.

But when the Squire came in with his clear, untroubled face, and at supper set placidly about helping to appease the appetites of his noisy flock; when with cheerful words and considerate courtesy he greeted his wife, Diana was fain to admit that he assuredly did not wear an air of conscious guilt, nor even of unwonted abstraction. There was apparently nothing upon which the most aggressive suspicion could feed. And on their way up stairs, the Squire lifted her sportively up a step or two, and, upon reaching their chamber-door, threw his arm about her in a quite lover-like fashion, and kissed her. Something entirely unstudied in the action thrilled her with keen delight.

VOL. V.-3.

It conveyed to her such an impression of his utter and unshaken trust in her. It conveyed, also, a sharp and silent rebuke for her temporary doubt of him.

His hand under her chin, the Squire raised his wife's face to his own. She blushed hotly. The Squire laughed. He liked to see Diana blush, it was with her so rare a thing. She slowly raised her eyes and looked at

him. When she dropped them again, she instinctively arraigned herself as an offender at the bar of her own conscience, and mutely and in humility beg ed her husband's forgiveness.

"My husband!" she said softly; but the Squire never guessed what those two words meant.

Yet, though her trust in her husband was whole again, a little sting yet remained when she remembered Hester. Though she absolved her friend from intentional wrongdoing, various incongruities noticeable in Hester's conduct latterly annoyed her. Her visits to Diana had not fallen off, but at times she seemed to be drifting away from the close sympathy of her earlier days-to be withdrawing within herself, if that could be said. of one never inclined to selt-obtrusion. Diana had never noticed this before, but now she comprehended much in the behavior of her friend that she had before only observed.

Why had not Hester told her of her troubles? Surely she had shown herself to be worthy of great trust-a friend true and loyal always. She might have done much to have spared Hester the rebuffs, the mortifications, that she had lately met. Neither Hester's name nor the Squire's need to have been called in ques ion, had she candidly laid before Diana her first experience of the village feeling. Diana Lyscombe might have been trusted to do battle efficiently for a woman she loved; especially when, at the same time, she was defending her own husband's reputation.

Then, too, she now saw that there was in reality some bond between Hester and the Squire; not in itself unworthy, but certainly of a sort to attract village comment. The weaver's wife had hinted at some business

connection linked with Salome's interest in the old shaft. Diana did not believe this. But why had Hester and her husband taken those walks, those rides, that drew down upon them public censure? What was the subject of their conferences, which she now recalled a trifle bitterly, broken off frequently when she entered her own parlor? What was it that Hester Holland could not confide to her, that Diana was now certain she had entrusted to her husband?

She might ask her husband for a solution of the enigma. But he had seen fit to withhold it from her, and she was too proud to ask. Worried at last with fruitless conjectures, she resolved to think no more of the matter, and so dropped wearily to sleep.

XIX.

SALOME sat in the open doorway, and looked at a range of low-lying hills that rose upon the northern ledge of the town. The sun had sunk, and a thin line of red yet touched their crests. Local tradition placed here the trail of the vanishing Indians, whose flight had opened up the mines to the white

man.

Salome often gazed along the trail, picturing with poetic sympathy the crouching band of exhausted braves, clambering up the hillsides and slowly abandoning the graves of their fathers.

The babbling voices of the village children in the still twilight came to her ear. In the deepening dusk, along the old "Indian Trail" could it be the outgrowth of Salome's morbid imaginings ?-was clearly outlined a horse and its rider. For a moment this rider paused, rose in his stirrups, his dark form standing out clearly against the faint red of the horizon, looked intently over the town, then rode as rapidly as possible down the rough, rocky path. She heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs galloping along the base of the hills-fainter yet as he turned into the rough lane leading to the Lyscombe place. Then it ceased, muffled by the soft sward that bordered the street in front of the house.

There was nothing strange in the sight of a solitary rider, among men to whom the saddle was a necessity, nor to eyes as accustomed to horsemen as were Salome's. She could not even see where this one went, for the road made a sharp bend at the Lyscombe's. There was nothing clandestine in his approach. On the contrary, his course on the summit of the ridge and down the old trail made him conspicuous. Nevertheless, an unpleasant shock struck Salome. She did not attempt to explain the feeling, but she knew that suspicion and repugnance rushed over her like a tide at sight of him. An ill defined fear, too, crept over her, that by a resistless fascination fixed her eyes upon him, till the long line of bluffs shut him from view.

Horton dropped into the cabin the next evening on his way home. Hester had never failed to realize, that upon Horton's friendship she might as firmly rely as she always had since the morning, years before, when he had taken her to her husband's sick bed in this very cabin. Always a frank, candid man, good-tempered, and with a hearty and attractive kindliness of manner, though not given to many words, tonight he showed an unusual disturbance in his open face.

"You remember Old Ben's shaft, Hester?" he asked.

Hester knew well where it was, and that it was a dreary grass-grown shaft, sunk years before by Old Ben; who, disgusted at not finding his hoped-for lead, had abandoned his "claim." More than this about it she did

not know. But Salome, sitting by, recalled much more. The long, dim ravines, the moist, heavy air, the flickering torches, the wet, trampled leaves, the subtle, sickish perfume of the May apple blooms--that during her whole life she had never smelled without renewing the sensations of that terrible night

the tumble-down cabin perched on the hillside above the rains, the dismal owl in the hollow tree; all came before her with weird distinctness.

The cabin stood on Old Ben's claim, as well as the disused shaft. This shaft Horton had purchased for Salome before his

marriage-for he had always considered her in part his charge. There were not wanting in Old Ben's shaft some slight indications that the lead which evaded him might be less elusive to some more fortunate seeker. Perhaps such luck might be in reserve for Salome. At any rate, the chance might be held for her at small cost. As to the cabin, it was of no value to any one, and neither it, nor its forlorn bit of garden, were included in Horton's purchase.

"Well," said Horton, going back to his question, "bad air and water were both against Ben. Maybe his prospect wasn't worth much, after all. I don't think it was, myself. But-a fellow up the hollow offered to buy it out, today, and—well, maybe a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. He must be crazy to offer a thousand dollars for it. What do you think about it, Hester?"

rotting in the air, the hammer and the pick were silent, the shaft grass grown, Old Ben was gone, and his claim was left unproved. No one had since ventured to open up the drift. But now this man, this "stranger up the hollow," wished to purchase it. Neither Hester nor Horton could quite decide what was best for Salome.

A slow, drizzling rain was falling when Horton left the cabin, so soft and unaggressive that it seemed rather mist than rain. He knew his path through the dark, and went rapidly on, followed by a sudden rustle of rain-drops, which he shook down with quick blows from the trees. It was still earlyLila would not mind if he delayed her supper for once, he reflected, as he turned into one of the small stores to talk over Salome's prospect with his fellow miners accustomed to gather there. This chap must

"Been through every foot of it. No show for mineral, there, unless they blast through to the second opening. Then 'twould have to be big to pay expenses. It's just for that one chance I bought it for Salome, though."

"Would it pay Salome to work it?" "That's what bothers me, Hester. If I was certain lead was there, I'd not think of selling it. But even if it is, it might not be enough to pay."

They talked a long time, discussing Salome's interest in the shaft from every point of view possible.

There had been one drift opened long ago, in Old Ben's time. It ran straight up toward his cabin, and quickly "barred up" against the miner. It offered no indications at all favorable to the patient owner, and he had at once discovered a second and more promising crevice. Year after year he worked with the sad pertinacity that so frequently distinguishes deluded miners, and invests them with pathetic interest. Certain always that his lead was just ahead, often disappointed, and jeered at, Old Ben worked on undauntedly. At length the weather-beaten windlass was still, the tattered rope hung

hours, or Salome would lose the sale.

Meanwhile, Hester and Salome, after Horton's departure, sat a little excited by so unusual an event as this proposed sale might prove. They had not barred their door, for both bars and bolts were practically unknown in Katise. Salome, at the open window, drew in with sensitive delight great wafts of perfume that drifted in from the wet sweetbriar by the path.

As she leaned her head a trifle further out, her quick ear caught the unaccustomed tramp of an animal quite near her. The grassy, rain sodden path broke off the sound. But scarcely had she made sure that her ear had not deceived her, when some one stopped, cautiously dismounted, and tied his horse to a sapling just beneath the window.

Instantly the remembrance of the rider she had watched the previous night down the old trail rushed into her mind. That very moment a tall, gaunt man came under the feeble flicker of Hester's candle. Salome looked at him defiantly. No! this man could, by no possible stretch of imagination, be taken for the horseman she had taken such an antipathy to.

"Come in!" said Hester.

on, "an' I covered my trail, and no man ever knew what I found in Ben's shaft-no man but one-❞

"And he?" Hester spoke with a sudden piercing anxiety.

"He!" screamed the other furiously. "He's the man as wants to buy the shaft from Horton. I was a thief-you said so. But damn him! He wore fine clothes-an' paid me for stealing. An' he meant to buy the shaft then, an'-an'-" A slow, intense anger burned in the words as they fell from his lips. "The boys whipped me because a gentleman-an honest man-when English Jack missed lead from Denny's pile, whispered that I was the thief. An' he set 'em on me-an' he was in the bowlin' alley, an' saw 'em cut the locust branches-an'-"

Hester came before him with a white face of despair, and looked straight into his eyes.

"He was-?" The suffering of a whole lifetime seemed compressed in this one

broken question.

when I saw you coming down it. You rode very fast. Did you lame your horse?" The stranger was puzzled.

"Me?" he answered. "Me ride down the old Indian trail! I never come down there any time, let alone last night."

The man rose. He looked at Hester hesitatingly, and at Salome with an expression of something akin to compassion.

"There's one more promise I want you to make," he said-"but I forget; you haven't made me any promise yet. You buy Old Ben's cabin and the little garden to the south -you, Hester Holland. Will you make me this one promise — me, that have come so far to serve you? It ain't worth much, but if you would buy it I'd know you didn't quite despise the wish, even of a no-account chap like me."

"I promise!" said Hester, deeply impressed by the almost painful humility that marked the request.

A brightness came into his face. "Somehow, I think," he said, "this isn't our last

A strange tenderness checked the passion of the gaunt man before them. With pathetic earnestness, he evaded her question.

"I told you then," he said, "I'd not forget your day's work. What matter who he was? "

The pale woman fronting him shrank away with a new-born terror from him, and still more visibly from Salome, mute and watch ful, at her side. She could not have explained why, but for the first time the aversion the child had excited in Lila appeared transferred to her. As if she fathomed these feelings, Salome loosened her grasp on her slender arm, and faced the stranger resolutely.

"Last night," she said, "the children were playing out there." She pointed to the street. "The sunset was red on the old Indian trail,

want to ask ye." He took her slim white hand; "Good bye," he said. His voice faltered a second. "Do you think," he said brokenly, "anything low and mean-even as low and mean as a thief--could ever get the welts on his soul scarred over?"

All

He was gone, and left her with a heart newly torn with pain. The rain was over; the moon broke through its rim of ragged clouds; the myriad voices of the night awoke more rampantly than ever in the pauses of the sighing, fitful breeze. Hester felt Salome's light touch upon her arm. her transient hostility died away, as she looked at her in the dim candle light. She bent down impulsively and kissed her, in voiceless appeal for forgiveness. All her old serene life seemed abruptly swept away from her. In her disturbed and troubled condition of mind, there remained one earthly comfort-one support. It was-Salome. Ada Langworthy Collier.