There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story: that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt, which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word; disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her the reason why. Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room, not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand. If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever. The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in it one night." At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard. When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less wonderful than now. "Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his freezing to death?" "I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell nothin' whatsomd-ever!" This, with a glance half pitying, half reassuring, as though he would promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe. One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!" She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner" was like. "He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"