"A despatch!" repeated Donna Maria, scornfully. "Truly--from whom?"

"I know not, my child," said Father Felipe, gazing at the pink cheeks, indignant eyes, and slightly swollen eyelids of his visitor; "this impatience--this anger is most unseemly."

"Was it from Mr. Dumphy?" reiterated Donna Maria, stamping her little foot.

Father Felipe drew back his chair. Through what unhallowed spell had this woman--once the meekest and humblest of wives--become the shrillest and most shrewest of widows? Was she about to revenge herself on Arthur for her long suffering with the late Don Jose? Father Felipe pitied Arthur now and prospectively.

"Are you going to tell me?" said Donna Maria, tremulously, with alarming symptoms of hysteria.

"I believe it was from Mr. Dumphy," stammered Padre Felipe. "At least the answer Don Arturo gave me to send in reply--only these words, 'I will return at once'--was addressed to Mr. Dumphy. But I know not what was the message _he_ received."

"You don't!" said Donna Maria, rising to her feet, with white in her cheek, fire in her eyes, and a stridulous pitch in her voice. "You don't! Well! I will tell you! It was the same news that _this_ brought."

She took a telegraphic despatch from her pocket and shook it in the face of Father Felipe. "There! read it! That was the news sent to him! That was the reason why he turned and ran away like a coward as he is! That was the reason why he never came near me, like a perjured traitor as he is! That is the reason why he came to you with his fastidious airs and, his supercilious smile--and his--his--Oh, how I HATE HIM! That is why!--read it! read it!

Why don't you read it?" (She had been gesticulating with it, waving it in the air wildly, and evading every attempt of Father Felipe to take it from her.) "Read it! Read it and see why!

Read and see that I am ruined!--a beggar--a cajoled and tricked and deceived woman--between these two villains, Dumphy and Mis--ter--Arthur--Poin--sett! Ah! Read it--or are you a traitor too? You and Dolores and all"----

She crumpled the paper in her hands, threw it on the floor, whitened suddenly round the lips, and then followed the paper as suddenly, at full length, in a nervous spasm at Father Felipe's feet. Father Felipe gazed, first at the paper and then at the rigid form of his friend. He was a man, an old one--with some experience of the s.e.x, and I regret to say he picked up the _paper_ first, and straightened _it_ out. It was a telegraphic despatch in the following words:--

"Sorry to say telegram just received that earthquake has dropped out lead of Conroy Mine! Everything gone up! Can't make further advances or sell stock.--DUMPHY."

Father Felipe bent over Donna Maria and raised her in his arms. "Poor little one!" he said. "But I don't think Arthur knew it."

CHAPTER II.

THE YELLOW ENVELOPE.

For once, by a cruel irony, the adverse reports regarding the stability of the Conroy mine were true. A few stockholders still clung to the belief that it was a fabrication to depress the stock, but the fact as stated in Mr. Dumphy's despatch to Donna Maria was in possession of the public. The stock, fell to $35, to $30, to $10--to nothing! An hour after the earthquake it was known in One Horse Gulch that the "lead" had "dropped" suddenly, and that a veil of granite of incalculable thickness had been upheaved between the seekers and the treasure, now lost in the mysterious depths below. The vein was gone! Where?--no one could tell.

There were various theories, more or less learned: there was one party who believed in the "subsidence" of the vein, another who believed in the "interposition" of the granite, but all tending to the same conclusion--the inaccessibility of the treasure. Science pointed with stony finger to the evidence of previous phenomena of the same character visible throughout the Gulch. But the grim "I told you so" of Nature was, I fear, no more satisfactory to the dwellers of One Horse Gulch than the ordinary prophetic distrust of common humanity.

The news spread quickly and far. It overtook several wandering Californians in Europe, and sent them to their bankers with anxious faces; it paled the cheeks of one or two guardians of orphan children, frightened several widows, drove a confidential clerk into shameful exile, and struck Mr. Raynor in Boston with such consternation, that people for the first time suspected that he had backed his opinion of the resources of California with capital. Throughout the length and breadth of the Pacific slope it produced a movement of aggression which the earthquake had hitherto failed to cover. The probabilities of danger to life and limb by a recurrence of the shock had been dismissed from the public consideration, but this actual loss of characteristic property awakened the gravest anxiety. If Nature claimed the privilege of at any time withdrawing from that implied contract under which so many of California's best citizens had occupied and improved the country, it was high time that something should be done. Thus spake an intelligent and unfettered press. A few old residents talked of returning to the East.

During this excitement Mr. Dumphy bore himself toward the world generally with perfect self-confidence, and, if anything, an increased aggressiveness. His customers dared not talk of their losses before him, or exhibit a stoicism unequal to his own.

"It's a bad business," he would say; "what do you propose?" And as the one latent proposition in each human breast was the return of the money invested, and as no one dared to make that proposition, Mr. Dumphy was, as usual, triumphant. In this frame of mind Mr. Poinsett found him on his return from the Mission of San Antonio, the next morning.

"Bad news, I suppose, down there," said Mr. Dumphy, briskly; "and I reckon the widow, though she has been luckier than her neighbours, don't feel particularly lively, eh? I'm devilish sorry for you, Poinsett, though, as a man, you can see that the investment was a good one. But you can't make a woman understand business. Eh? Well, the Rancho's worth double the mortgage, I reckon. Eh? Ugly, ain't she--of course! Said she'd been swindled? That's like a woman! You and me know 'em! eh, Poinsett?" Mr. Dumphy emitted his characteristic bark, and winked at his visitor.

Arthur looked up in unaffected surprise. "If you mean Mrs. Sepulvida,"

he said, coldly, "I haven't seen her. I was on my way there when your telegram recalled me. I had some business with Padre Felipe."

"You don't know then that the Conroy mine has gone up with the earthquake, eh? Lead dropped out--eh? and the widow's fifty-six thousand?"--here Mr. Dumphy snapped his finger and thumb, to ill.u.s.trate the lame and impotent conclusion of Donna Maria's investment--"don't you know that?"

"No," said Arthur, with perfect indifference and a languid abstraction that awed Mr. Dumphy more than anxiety; "no, I don't. But I imagine that isn't the reason you telegraphed me."

"No," returned Dumphy, still eyeing Poinsett keenly for a possible clue to this singular and unheard-of apathy to the condition of the fortune of the woman his visitor was about to marry. "No--of course!"

"Well!" said Arthur, with that dangerous quiet which was the only outward sign of interest and determination in his nature. "I'm going up to One Horse Gulch to offer my services as counsel to Gabriel Conroy.

Now for the details of this murder, which, by the way, I don't believe Gabriel committed, unless he's another man than the one I knew! After that you can tell me _your_ business with me, for I don't suppose you telegraphed to me on his account solely. Of course, at first you felt it was to your interest to get him and his wife out of the way, now that Ramirez is gone. But now, if you please, let me know what _you_ know about this murder."

Mr. Dumphy thus commanded, and completely under the influence of Arthur's quiet will, briefly recounted the particulars already known to the reader, of which he had been kept informed by telegraph.

"He's been recaptured," added Dumphy, "I learn by a later despatch; and I don't reckon there'll be another attempt to lynch him. I've managed _that_," he continued, with a return of his old self-a.s.sertion. "I've got some influence there!"

For the first time during the interview Arthur awoke from his pre-occupation, and glanced keenly at Dumphy. "Of course," he returned, coolly, "I don't suppose you such a fool as to allow the only witness you have of your wife's death to be sacrificed--even if you believed that the impostor who was personating your wife had been charged with complicity in a capital crime and had fled from justice. You're not such a fool as to believe that this Mrs. Conroy won't try to help her husband, that she evidently loves, by every means in her power--that she won't make use of any secret she may have that concerns you to save him and herself. No, Mr. Peter Dumphy," said Arthur significantly; "no, you're too much of a business man not to see that." As he spoke he noted the alternate flushing and paling of Mr. Dumphy's face, and read--I fear with the triumphant and instinctive consciousness of a superior intellect--that Mr. Dumphy _had_ been precisely such a fool, and had failed!

"I reckon n.o.body will put much reliance on the evidence of a woman charged with a capital crime," said Mr. Dumphy, with a show of confidence he was far from feeling.

"Suppose that she and Gabriel both swear that _she_ knows your abandoned wife, for instance; suppose that they both swear that she and you connived to personate Grace Conroy for the sake of getting the t.i.tle to this mine; suppose that she alleges that she repented and married Gabriel, as she did, and suppose that they both admit the killing of this Ramirez--and a.s.sert that you were persecuting them through him, and still are; suppose that they show that he forged a second grant to the mine--through _your_ instigation?"

"It's a lie," interrupted Dumphy, starting to his feet; "he did it from jealousy."

"Can you _prove_ his motives?" said Arthur.

"But the grant was not in my favour--it was to some old Californian down in the Mission of San Antonio. I can prove that," said Dumphy, excitedly.

"Suppose you can? n.o.body imagines you so indiscreet as to have had another grant conveyed to _you directly_, while you were negotiating with Gabriel for _his_. Don't be foolish! _I_ know you had nothing to do with the forged grant. I am only suggesting how you have laid yourself open to the charges of a woman of whom you are likely to make an enemy, and might have made an ally. If you calculate to revenge Ramirez, consider first if you care to have it proved that he was a confidential agent of yours--as they will, if you don't help _them_. Never mind whether they committed the murder. You are not their judge or accuser.

You must help them for your own sake. No!" continued Arthur, after a pause, "congratulate yourself that the Vigilance Committee did not hang Gabriel Conroy, and that you have not to add revenge to the other motives of a desperate and scheming woman."

"But are you satisfied that Mrs. Conroy _is_ really the person who stands behind Colonel Starbottle and personates my wife?"

"I am," replied Arthur, positively.

Dumphy hesitated a moment. Should he tell Arthur of Colonel Starbottle's interview with him, and the delivery and subsequent loss of the mysterious envelope? Arthur read his embarra.s.sment plainly, and precipitated his decision with a single question.

"Have you had any further interview with Colonel Starbottle?"

Thus directly adjured. Dumphy hesitated no longer, but at once repeated the details of his late conversation with Starbottle, his successful bribery of the Colonel, the delivery of the sealed envelope under certain conditions, and its mysterious disappearance. Arthur heard him through with quiet interest, but when Mr. Dumphy spoke of the loss of the envelope, he fixed his eyes on Mr. Dumphy's with a significance that was unmistakable.

"You say you lost this envelope trusted to your honour!" said Arthur, with slow and insulting deliberation. "Lost it, without having opened it or learned its contents? That was very unfortunate, Mr. Dumphy, ve-ry un-for-tu-nate!"

The indignation of an honourable man at the imputation of some meanness foreign to his nature is weak compared with the anger of a rascal accused of an offence which he might have committed, but didn't. Mr.

Dumphy turned almost purple! It was so evident that he had not been guilty of concealing the envelope, and did not know its contents, that Arthur was satisfied.

"He denied any personal knowledge of Mrs. Conroy in this affair?"

queried Arthur.

"Entirely! He gave me to understand that his instructions were received from another party unknown to me," said Dumphy. "Look yer, Poinsett--you're wrong! I don't believe it is that woman."

Arthur shook his head. "No one else possesses the information necessary to blackmail you. No one else has a motive in doing it."

The door opened to a clerk bearing a card. Mr. Dumphy took it impatiently and read aloud, "Colonel Starbottle of Siskiyou!" He then turned an anxious face to Poinsett.

"Good," said that gentleman, quietly; "admit him." As the clerk disappeared, Arthur turned to Dumphy, "I suppose it was to meet this man you sent for me?"