Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/353

Rh pointment he had always been to his parents. The calligraphy was his mother's, but the substance of the letter seemed to have been dictated by his father. It closed with the following sententious paragraph:

"About your wife, your father entertains a slight doubt, which you cannot say is altogether groundless. In the first place, he thinks it almost incredible that she should have escaped the general fate of your party; but, granting that, he doubts that the Indians abducted her, as you say. He believes that you are living together, and that you an using her pretended abduction as a means of extorting money from us. While we have this unpleasant feeling about the matter, you certainly cannot blame us for deferring further remittances. Furthermore, you certainly cannot blame us for so reasonable a doubt. This man Dubb, being, as you say, under twenty, is far too young to be intrusted with so large a sum of money as the one named by you. If you will tell us how to find his parents, or guardian, we will arrange what he has loaned in that way, which you cannot deny is very much better than sending it to you for him. If your wife is really gone, it may be the manifestation of a rebuke from on high, to you, for making a wife of so undesirable a person. Your father further suggests that, since such glowing accounts are daily reaching us of the fortunes which are being made in the California mines, you might proceed on there and obtain money for the relief of your wife—if she is lost—by some more reputable means than by borrowing and begging. Trusting that something may arouse you to a proper sense of duty, that you will yet do credit to your family name, and that you will be reawakened to a sense of appreciation of your Christian training, we are, as ever, "Your loving parents,

After a few moments of sullen silence, in which his face grew very cold and hard, Mark Stanley read the letter from his parents to Dubb.

"It isn't just quite exactly what you expected," said Dubb, quietly.

"Damn them! no!" cried Stanley, tearing the letter in fragments, and stamping them into the ground. "It is a long way from what I expected, though it is exactly what I ought to have expected. Isn't it sweet? Isn't it truly parental? Remember my Christian training! Do honor to my family name! I wish to God they were here now! I'd"

And then, in an uncontrollable paroxysm of rage, he vented out his emotions in a jargon of sounds which bore no resemblance to words. Dubb regarded him silently and complacently until the first violence of Mark's tantrum was somewhat subsided, and then he said,—

"I don't seem to be able to see what good you am to git out of taking on."

"No good, sure enough; but what am I to do? This upsets the last stone in the heap. I"

"It don't upset these here mountings, as I can see," interposed Dubb, glancing at the great snowy peaks which surrounded them.

"And what if it did?" snarled Mark, half guessing Dubb's meaning. "What then?"