“Does--this man--know of your intention?” asked Miss Mary, suddenly. “No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it.” “Go to him at once--tonight--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell him I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the child again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, he must not follow! There, go now, please--I'm weary, and--have much yet to do!” They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned. “Good night.” She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door. It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for the schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, in obedience to a pleasant voice from the “inside,” he suddenly reined up his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy hopped out at the command of Miss Mary. “Not that bush, Tommy--the next.” Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a tall azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary. “All right now?” “All right.” And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch. BROWN OF CALAVERAS A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and boot heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evident that one of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the part of loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and some concern in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further indicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the box seat, noted with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that he depreciated the sex, but that he recognized therein a deceitful element, the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equally uncertain blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr. Hamlin was a professional exponent. So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down, he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil was fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and grave indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing to good breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his overflowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside this lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric gravity.