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THE CHOSEN VALLEY.1— II.

BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE,

Author of "The Led-Horse Claim," " John Bodewin's Testimony," etc. WITH PICTURES BY THE AUTHOR.

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"Well, I knew you 'd buck at the name of Norrisson," Alan retorted, in the country slang which was supposed to be objectionable to his sister; " and so I thought I 'd present him at a safe distance."

"Why should you present him? Do you know him, and did he ask it?"

"He knows the family too well for that. I did it just to see you stare; and he's off my conscience now."

"And on mine; is that what you mean, dear? I don't know why you should feel guilty. Would papa have us less than civil to a stranger asking his way out of the cañon?"

"My father is noted, then, for his hospitality to strangers of the name of Norrisson ?"

"Hospitality is quite another thing to answering a civil question. What passed between you on the bluffs you know best yourself, and whether you 've stretched your commission as your father's son."

"Oh, my father's son! Who cares whose son I am? We're always in some confounded attitude. It's the fault of all proud, poky families like ours; we ought to mix up more, and be more like other people."

"You talk of the family as if you had founded it."

"I intend to found the American branch of it and I shall go easy when my time comes; I shall not tie up to the first thing I take hold 1 Copyright, 1892, by

of. What's this place to us more than another, so we get a living out of the country?"

"A living! Do you think that your father could n't get a living, any place but here?"

"He came to get what he calls a living. He came to found an estate in lands for his children, in a country where land is cheap, and men-like himself, for instance-are dear; so he told me himself."

Dolly flushed at the sneer and the flippant tone, while she could not deny absolutely the truth of her brother's words.

"Very likely; the least of his motives is the one he would put into words. Money-making is a thing even you can understand. It is not to every one he would talk of the greater thing he came for; his chosen work, the nearest to the work of the Creator. Think of that valley as it is now, with a great, useless river bolting through it, carrying away the water that should be the wealth of the land; carrying away gold, too, and hiding it in the black sands. And such an unkind land! Not a tree for miles, nor a little stream for the poor cattle to stop at, but they must travel till they reach the river: and then to think what it would be in twenty years with the water upon it! If it's glorious to discover new lands, is it less so to make them, out of old waste places that part one State from another, and add nothing but miles of distance? And all that it means to you is a 'living'!"

"You need n't sling your blank verse at me. I know what ditches can do; but where are they? Where is this great canal we have been a dog's age building?"

"And what if it were a man's age? Ten acres of land can support one man, so they say; suppose it should take a man his lifetime to turn one hundred acres of desert into homes for ten poor men. And here is a great province given over to drought, and your father has spent fifteen years on the borders of it, telling the rich men how good it is, and how the people need it—"

"Not he!" Alan struck in. "He tells them about the dividends."

"How they want it, then. I'm not claiming it's a charity; but it 's turning time and money and knowledge and prophecy to as good use as they can be put."

"It's all very fine, large talk, but we get Mary Hallock Foote.

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'no for'ader.' 'Poor and poorer we maun be'; and the canal is no nearer than it was ten years ago. Dreams, let me tell you, are not filling at the price."

"Yes; you are always keen for the price. You had better go down to the town and get behind a counter, and then you 'll handle the price of everything, as soon as you part with it, your time in the bargain."

"There are plenty of our name who have stood behind counters, before me."

"I'm not denying it. There is a canny chiel in every family; and there is one that sticks in the lone minorities, and fights for his dream though it may not fill his stomach. That is our father, bless him! And I love him because he is a mighty dreamer, and a prophet, and a man of faith in more than his pickle money's worth!"

"Dolly, his dream will destroy him. Don't you know that we are beaten? We have been beaten these ten years. Everybody knows it but ourselves. This location is ours only because no one is ready to take it from us."

"You may say that no one is ready! It's not so easy to do a thing as to hinder other people. As for being beaten, I'll believe it when I hear it from papa. Alan, lad, what hurts me is: here Mr. Price Norrisson has got his son home from Europe to help him in his schemes, so Margaret says; and where is our father's son? Casting eyes on the winning side, and crying that we are beaten!"

"My father's son is here, thank you, staked out in the sage-brush," Alan retorted sulkily; "and I'd like to know how much help Philip Norrisson could give his father, now, if he 'd had my chances and no more."

"Bless me! the chances you talk of cost money, and I never yet heard of a son that called himself injured because his father was not so rich as some others. If our father cannot afford to buy us our teaching he can give it us, and more than we seem likely to get away with,' as you say. By the time you are where papa cannot help you, Alan, lad, I think there'll be money enough to send you to school."

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"Well, I wish you would n't' Alan, lad' me. It's well enough for Margaret, who has nothing but the Scotch; but ladies—”.

"Yes; Margaret would smile to hear you talk of ladies-that nursed you on her knees and Laught you to spell the word. It was when you got beyond Margaret's teaching that you went to learn English of the cowboys, I dare say." The morning sun was creeping up the wall of the south corridor; it chased Alan out of the hammock to the step by Dolly's side.

Having come to a knotty place in his Ovid, he was not above asking help of his sister. Dolly brushed back the locks of cobweb fine

ness that clung to her warm forehead, using the back of her hand, her fingers being damp and ruddy with pinching the dewy pea-pods. She leaned over the book without touching it; then changed her mind, and drew back. "Are we beaten?" she asked defiantly. "Do you say it of your own knowledge?" "How should I know? I know how the talk goes."

"Oh, the talk! The talk is nothing; 'kintra clatter.'"

Dunsmuir had sunk in his scheme all that he had put into it, save his children and two faithful friends; plain, poor people, staple products of the older countries, proved by every form of discipline known to the new. Job Dutton was a transplanted New Englander from the Western Reserve, the last foreman left on the work from the siftings of years. Margaret, his wife, had come to the cañon as nursemaid to Mrs. Dunsmuir's children. After the lady's death there had been unfortunate insinuations, conveyed in emotional letters — those unconscious vessels of wrath-from her people in Scotland to Dunsmuir, sore with his grief. These he understood to intimate that his wife had been sacrificed to his scheme. Later the family undertook to show him his duty to his children. Dunsmuir declined the interference, and refused to send his babies home; and so the cañon kept them, and Margaret with them. The cañon was responsible for Margaret's marriage, and Job's further entanglement thereby with Dunsmuir's fortunes: for Margaret would not leave the children; the question was never raised between husband and wife, and every year they gave to the cañon life made it harder to break away.

Dunsmuir alone of the household knew its full indebtedness to the cabin; and he fearlessly accepted the obligation as one who is generous himself and confident of his ability to straighten the account. Nor is it likely he could escape from the inbred conviction that it must be a privilege for persons of Margaret's class to be connected in service with persons of his own, with or without remuneration. It is a sentiment that dies hard in the blood of those accustomed to be served, which many pleasing illusions and traditions help to keep alive, even in new countries, where it is imported under conditions often curiously the reverse of feudal.

As the master's income was eaten up by the scheme, sacrifices had to be made, and as a matter of course it was the women who made them, and thought little of it. Since Dolly had gained her growth she had been dressed in the simplest of her mother's gowns, made over to fit her transatlantic slenderness; the grand ones were locked away, up-stairs, in sweet-scented towels, and layers and stuffings of tissue-paper,

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feign labels, went out to seek her father to bid him good

me to the full s toilet. It caret to feel that She herself wore thanked that land, and was never washed the softhe winds the lines. But sack coffee at and lemons, with ****.—which time ween midnight and gat, electric nights -and his pipe ragrant, always, of rew not how to econohe was not young enough ect he could have gone you have complained. He en Margaret sternly rede garments which he had ed upon Job; he put them se them in a spirit of manly anatets beyond his knowledge, C. Margaret counted the silk bat were spared him as if they otes, and his shirts and socks Dat was miraculous to Dunsso ever looked to trace their history actic extension of darns. Had it be hard wear on his clothes Marwww.ti woner have seen him "howkin' he hillside with the men, than weara heart over such toys as he mostly ne withal.

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outlast the coats that cover them, ain's heart was yet strong in hope. kening inertia of his life, the long appointment, was beginning to tell His temper was giving; he was utking time; the dry summers bred A low fever that wasted his flesh, and d his pulse, and kept him thrashing abbed at night; and the river's mount., borne past his window on the gulch woke the echoes of all the sorrows he had known.

to might, as usual, Dolly prepared her faay for his bedtime refreshment. Its place on the corner-table by the cupboard in his .. Margaret never broke anything, and the cut glass tumbler Dunsmuir had mixed ddy in, the first summer in the cañon, was I the one he used. Then she looked into cupboard to see if the Wedgwood biscuitu needed replenishing; screwed down the trifle, secured the flapping bamboo gainst gusts and night insects, and

night.

A soft but mighty wind was blowing under the bright stars that sparkled in the dark, cloudless heavens as if a snapping frost cleared the air. A November night to look at-the blanched crispness on the blasted grass, the sharp dartle of the stars- but the gale blew out of the warm southwest. Dolly took it full on her bare throat and welcomed it, and lifted her arms to feel it stroke them where her thin sleeves slipped back. Behind her a great, co-radiant light spread upward from the bluffs, announcing the majesty of the moon. All the way she went, along the pallid drifts of sand, to find her father. He might, and generally did, accept her good-night kiss mechanically, but he would miss it, she knew, should it fail to come. She found him in a little cove, where the shrunken brook came down over the stones with a monotonous, vapid murmur. He lay in a trough of the sand, listening to the mingled tale of waters," like a sick man counting his own pulse," thought Dolly; and as she looked she felt a very mother to him.

"Good night, papa dear," she chanted, while yet she was a little way off; she knew he never liked to be surprised in his silent fits. Instead of answering, he sat up, opened one wing of his sand-cloak, and signed to her to sit beside him.

"What is Alan's business down the trail this time of night?" he asked her.

"He went with the newspapers for the men. I forgot to give them to Margaret."

"Is there any need of his staying so? " "Oh, they just delight to have him; and it's Saturday night."

"He's keeping them out of their beds. But how should he know, that never did a day's work in his life, when bedtime comes to a man who's been up since five?"

"It's not quite altogether Alan's fault, is it, papa, that he has not enough to do?" Dolly offered.

Dunsmuir kicked the plaid from his feet. "Not enough to do? Where are his books? He has enough to do there, I think. But no; the book of the range is Alan's study, with a cowboy for his tutor. He'd sooner be able to pick up his hat from the ground at a gallop, than take a stool in the first engineering house in London."

"I did not know there was any such place waiting for him," said Dolly, with deep simplicity.

"And if there was he is not fit for it. Let him first do well, or fairly well, at home. Where's the responsibility he has been tried with that he has n't refused, from fetching the wood for my office-fire, which he never did faithfully for one week at a time! No, I will not take shame to

myself; child or parent, each must 'dree his ain weird.' The cañon has not hurt my girl." Dunsmuir drew his daughter to him with an absent-minded caress. His loquacity sat strangely on him, for as a rule he was a silent man in his thoughts. She shrank from being a party to this discussion of her brother's faults, and after a little she ventured to change the subject.

"What does Margaret mean when she talks of your saving their homestead? How saved it ?"

fore. About every third year, as far back as her young remembrance went, the scheme had culminated, and always at this season, which was also the anniversary of the family's greatest sorrow. Dunsmuir's hopes had risen with the floods and waned as the river sank in its bed. The strain of these summers had been followed by dumb, dogged winters spent between the study and the "quarter-deck," as the children called the long, windy portico facing the river, where their father walked out his moods alone. Every day he would tramp down

"I never saved their land. Good faith! It's to the cabin to "count the force," as he said; little they've ever saved through me.” "Well, you did something. It was something about taxes, by Margaret's way of it."

"Taxes, to be sure. Why, Job missed his reckoning, somehow, and the taxes went by default. They've a curious, inconsequent way, here, of collecting them. The claim was advertised in process of law, but Job did not see the newspaper. I happened by as the land was being cried at the court-house steps, and paid the tax, as any man would. They could have redeemed it afterward, had they been posted on the law; and I should have seen to that. Margaret's gratitude is the simplest thing about

her."

"It would seem she likes to think you saved it; she has it over and over. Latterly she is always harping."

"And do you know why? To spare your pride, should you come to know they are trusting me for the best part of their wages, since two years. I have paid them as I could, a little from time to time to keep the pot boiling, and they have scraped a little off their ranch, one way and another. But there's where it is; Margaret will not have us beholden, so she makes out there 's a debt on their side to offset what we owe them.

"It need not hurt you to know it now," Dunsmuir added gently, seeing that Dolly was more troubled even than she was touched by the ingenuity of Margaret's devotion. "These sore matters will soon be straightened. We'll all get our pay before long. It's a pity, though, since you speak of land, that Job took up his desert section four years ago this summer, when, as I thought, the scheme was ripe. The land is forfeit now; nobody has touched it, but it will be covered with filings as soon as word gets out the canal is to go through. It was by my advice he used his right. It is a fortune lost. And I dare say they never speak of it, even to each other. They 're honest, worthy folk. I'd like to see them get the worth of their waiting. But what comes to one comes to all."

Dolly listened, but without the expected enthusiasm. She had heard such prophecies beVOL. XLIV.-28.

"the force" consisting of Job and three men more. By spring he would come out of himself, white and worn; sort his garden-seeds, trim his rosebushes, and drive a little harder with the lessons, a sign by which the children knew when there was an inward rising to be quelled. Debarred of his own work the man loved to see things move where he had power to make them. It was fortunate for Dolly that Alan balked at his lessons; she would have gone far beyond her strength to please her father; but she hung back not to exhibit too great a distance between Alan and herself. When it was dead low water with Dunsmuir's hopes there was never a word said about the scheme, and Margaret was as tender to him as to a sick man under the doctor's sentence.

"At last!" he breathed, with the sigh of one who feels the screws relax. He turned his face toward the notch in the cañon wall, where the light of the west looked in:

"Yes; hope may with my strong desire keep

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And I be undeluded, unbetrayed."

"I dread to hear you speak it," pleaded Dolly. "If the door is open at last, let us creep through softly, and not boast we are free. I am afraid—”

Her father turned to look at her. “Ah!” she cried, "listen to that!"

The climbing waters broke with a crash on the bar; the current, racing down, hurled them bodily through the sounding strait. Out of the darkness and clamor came a small, cold, mocking laugh, distinctly syllabled, but repeated on one note devoid of human expression. It was like a cold touch laid upon the spine.

"Come, come, you hear the water clapping in the breach. You'll hear it any night when the river is up, and the wind carries this way. Do you think it is the kelpie? We are after none of her secrets."

"But I hate it. Whatever it is, I wish it would hush."

"We will cry it hush, come high water another year. When the rife river heads into a lake, and leans its breast against the scarp of

the dam, you will hear no more of the water's gecking. The kelpie 'll be closed out, and so will the wearifu' crew of cacklers that cry 'Crank!' and 'Dreamer!' when a man is doing his best, and mostly failing at it. There, we will not speak of it. The worst of a long, slow fight is the bitterness it breeds."

His thoughts must have crowded hard upon him, for he checked himself, like one who feels that he has spoken overmuch. He took his daughter's hand and passed it gently over his face; from the steep forehead over the bony brow and sunken eyelid, down the cheek and over his mouth, breathing its softness as one inhales the cool virtue of a rose.

Tears gathered in Dolly's eyes. She made no secret of wiping them away. She loosened the beads that clung to her warm neck and choked her.

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Why do you cry, Dolly? I should be glad to see you take good news more simply. It comes late for some of us, but not for you and Alan. Can you not believe it?"

"I believe it, father, but I do not see it nor feel it yet."

"That is quite natural. Well, shall we go up now? See, the moon has swung out like a great ship from port; her course lies clear before her. God knows I am thankful this work is to be finished. I have been cruelly hampered in it."

"I knew it was for the work," said Dolly, proudly. "Some have said it was for a great fortune you have stayed here so long."

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Eh, you think your father should be above such toys as fortune-seeking? Well, there you are grandly mistaken. I am no philanthropist, and I am a man that needs money. But what matters a reason here or there?-romance it as you will. The man himself is his own best reason for what he does; and when the thing succeeds, all can see why he was bent on doing it."

"And if it fail?"

"There is no such word, my dear. Good work can wait; it never fails."

Dolly sighed tremulously. "I wish you would tell me why you have waited all these years. It could not have been just for money."

"Why have I waited?" he mused, with head erect and dreamy eye. "He that sees us as we are, our prideful mistakes and pitiful victories, kens why, and at what cost."

May I ask you just this?" the girl persisted; "would you have kept on just the same had you known—"

"Ask me nothing! I gave up thinking years ago. I put my hand to the plow; the share cut deep, the furrow was long, and we are nearing the end of it. May God prosper the harvest!" He took her by the shoulders, and shook

her, and kissed her hard. Dolly laughed, with the tears in her eyes. They went up the hill together, she with her arm under her father's, trying to keep step with his long, unheeding stride. On the crest the wind caught them. Dunsmuir opened his plaid and folded Dolly in it; the rowdy blast strained it tight. At the study door he took her by the pinioned arms and lifted her over the sill, setting her down again with a mighty hug. He was gay as a boy. Dolly trembled for him, he seemed so exaltedly, perilously secure.

"Well, what is it?" he asked presently, seeing that she hung about his room, looking as if she had something still on her mind. "As well out with it now as any time."

"Would you mind showing me the letter? I'd like so much to see the very words."

Dunsmuir smiled in the negative. "I have no right to show you a letter which relates to other people's business," he said. "And you would not understand the half of it. One thing I may tell you; there will be no expert examination of the scheme. They have looked up my record, and are satisfied that I am competent to pronounce on it, and that nothing will be misrepresented."

"You will like to work for those people!" said Dolly, beaming. “And has no one ever come to look at the scheme?"

"Several people; before you could remember, perhaps."

"Why was it nothing came of those visits?" "O ye of little faith! Generally speaking, a sinister little cloud has appeared, no bigger than a man's hand, the hand of Price Norrisson-may the Lord find better work for him than meddling with me! I have said I would never forgive him till he stood out of my sunlight. But these are not matters for you to take to bed with you. Remember, there comes a time when the best word is the word to hold by."

Betwixt happiness and doubt Dolly lay awake long, and heard Alan's feet, about eleven o'clock, pounding on the sod past her bedroom window. At the same moment, from over the gulch, came Modoc's short, excited neighhis call to Alan when his blood was up. It was not likely that Alan had been all this while at the cabin, thought Dolly; the conviction startled her that he had been racing over the hills on Modoc, reckless of his father's express conditions. Alan tried one and another of the rear doors; all were closed for the night. He then went around the house, quietly, to the front door; Dolly heard her father's voice in sharp tones of challenge and inquiry, followed by Alan's low, sullen replies.

She sat up in bed and rocked herself to and fro, in misery for them both.

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