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XXXIV

HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF

ERE," 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 st