Ah, John Ranger! Materialist as you used always to proclaim yourself, you cannot, in the deepest recesses of your soul, rebel against the faith that is “the evidence of things not seen.” What have you done with your agnosticism? “Captain,” said Sally, in a subdued tone, “I have seen the day when I would have followed Sam O’Dowd to the ends of the earth if he had commanded. I could and would have lived on the acorns of the forest rather than have failed to be his wife. Do not ask me to love you now. I cannot be your wife.” “Are we not engaged?” he asked, astonished. “Yes; conditionally. But I cannot think about it now. If I can ever bring myself to think it right for me to be your wife, I will not hesitate to tell you so. But not now, Captain; not now.” She arose abruptly, and was gone. XXXIV _HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF_ “Here,” said Jean, the next morning, approaching her father, who was hard at work by sunrise, “are the letters I promised to write to Mr. Ashleigh and his mother. You stipulated that you should see them, as you will remember.” His head and heart were aching. “I don’t care a rap for your nonsense,” he exclaimed. “Nothing’ll ever come of it. The fellow has never written to you.” “That’s so!” thought Jean, strolling off aimlessly into the woods. “Daddie gave him our address as Oregon City. Oh, my God! can it be possible that my other self has been married (or the same as married) to Le-Le, the Indian slave?” Giant trees rose often to the height of three hundred feet,—one hundred and fifty feet from the ground without a limb,—and so straight that no hand-made colonnade could equal them for grace and symmetry. As Jean stood under these stately monarchs of the soil and listened to the soft sighing of the wind among their evergreen leaves, she heard the roar of rushing water. She clambered through a labyrinth of deciduous undergrowth till she came to a horseshoe bend at the head of a gulch, over which the water foamed and tumbled till lost from sight amid the tangled ferns and foliage. “Halloa!” cried a voice from an unseen source. She looked in the direction whence the call seemed to proceed, and beheld, standing on the opposite bluff, a typical young backwoodsman, tall and shapely. She returned the salutation by waving her sunbonnet, which she had been swinging aimlessly by its strings, exposing her face and head to the caress of the balm-laden air. A minute later, and the stranger was by her side. She noticed that he carried in a careless way a long, old-fashioned rifle; that a pipe was in his mouth, and a pistol of the “pepper-box” variety protruded from the leg of his boot. “Are you the Ranger gal what got left at Green River?” She turned ghastly pale at mention of the locality where her thoughts were centred, but made no audible reply. “My name is Henry Jackman,—better known as Happy Jack,” he said, as he dropped the butt-end of his rifle to the ground with a thud, and stood waiting for her to speak.