Stacy laughed his short laugh. Nevertheless, the conversation dragged again. The feverish gayety of the early part of the evening was gone, and they seemed to be suffering from the reaction. They fell into their old attitudes, looking from the firelight to the distant bulk of Black Spur without a word. The occasional sound of the voices of promenaders on the veranda at last ceased; there was the noise of the shutting of heavy doors below, and Barker rose.

“You’ll excuse me, boys; but I must go and say good-night to little Sta, and see that he’s all right. I haven’t seen him since I got back. But”—to Demorest—“you’ll see him to-morrow, when Kitty comes. It is as much as my life is worth to show him before she certifies him as being presentable.” He paused, and then added: “Don’t wait up, you fellows, for me; sometimes the little chap won’t let me go. It’s as if he thought, now Kitty’s away, I was all he had. But I’ll be up early in the morning and see you. I dare say you and Stacy have a heap to say to each other on business, and you won’t miss me. So I’ll say good-night.” He laughed lightly, pressed the hands of his partners in his usual hearty fashion, and went out of the room, leaving the gloom a little deeper than before. It was so unusual for Barker to be the first to leave anybody or anything in trouble that they both noticed it. “But for that,” said Demorest, turning to Stacy as the door closed, “I should say the dear fellow was absolutely unchanged. But he seemed a little anxious to-night.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. He’s got two women on his mind,—as if one was not enough.”

“I don’t understand. You say his wife is foolish, and this other”—

“Never mind that now,” interrupted Stacy, getting up and putting down his pipe. “Let’s talk a little business. That other stuff will keep.”

“By all means,” said Demorest, with a smile, settling down into his chair a little wearily, however. “I forgot business. And I forgot, my dear Jim, to congratulate you. I’ve heard all about you, even in New York. You’re the man who, according to everybody, now holds the finances of the Pacific Slope in his hands. And,” he added, leaning affectionately towards his old partner, “I don’t know any one better equipped in honesty, straightforwardness, and courage for such a responsibility than you.”

“I only wish,” said Stacy, looking thoughtfully at Demorest, “that I didn’t hold nearly a million of your money included in the finances of the Pacific Slope.”

“Why,” said the smiling Demorest, “as long as I am satisfied?”

“Because I am not. If you’re satisfied, I’m a wretched idiot and not fit for my position. Now, look here, Phil. When you wrote me to sell out your shares in the Wheat Trust I was a little staggered. I knew your gait, my boy, and I knew, too, that, while you didn’t know enough to trust your own opinions or feeling, you knew too much to trust any one’s opinion that wasn’t first-class. So I reckoned you had the straight tip; but I didn’t see it. Now, I ought not to have been staggered if I was fit for your confidence, or, if I was staggered, I ought to have had enough confidence in myself not to mind you. See?”

“I admit your logic, old man,” said Demorest, with an amused face, “but I don’t see your premises. WHEN did I tell you to sell out?”

“Two days ago. You wrote just after you arrived.”

“I have never written to you since I arrived. I only telegraphed to you to know where we should meet, and received your message to come here.”

“You never wrote me from San Francisco?”

“Never.”

Stacy looked concernedly at his friend. Was he in his right mind? He had heard of cases where melancholy brooding on a fixed idea had affected the memory. He took from his pocket a letter-case, and selecting a letter handed it to Demorest without speaking.

Demorest glanced at it, turned it over, read its contents, and in a grave voice said, “There is something wrong here. It is like my handwriting, but I never wrote the letter, nor has it been in my hand before.”

Stacy sprang to his side. “Then it’s a forgery!”

“Wait a moment.” Demorest, who, although very grave, was the more collected of the two, went to a writing-desk, selected a sheet of paper, and took up a pen. “Now,” he said, “dictate that letter to me.”

Stacy began, Demorest’s pen rapidly following him:—

“DEAR JIM,—On receipt of this get rid of my Wheat Trust shares at whatever figure you can. From the way things pointed in New York”—

“Stop!” interrupted Demorest.

“Well?” said Stacy impatiently.

“Now, my dear Jim,” said Demorest plaintively, “when did you ever know me to write such a sentence as ‘the way things pointed’?”

“Let me finish reading,” said Stacy. This literary sensitiveness at such a moment seemed little short of puerility to the man of business.

“From the way things pointed in New York,” continued Stacy, “and from private advices received, this seems to be the only prudent course before the feathers begin to fly. Longing to see you again and the dear old stamping-ground at Heavy Tree. Love to Barker. Has the dear old boy been at any fresh crank lately?

“Yours, PHIL DEMOREST.”

The dictation and copy finished together. Demorest laid the freshly written sheet beside the letter Stacy had produced. They were very much alike and yet quite distinct from each other. Only the signature seemed identical.

“That’s the invariable mistake with the forger,” said Demorest; “he always forgets that signatures ought to be identical with the text rather than with each other.”

But Stacy did not seem to hear this or require further proof. His face was quite gray and his lips compressed until lost in his closely set beard as he gazed fixedly out of the window. For the first time, really concerned and touched, Demorest laid his hand gently on his shoulder.

“Tell me, Jim, how much does this mean to you apart from me? Don’t think of me.”

“I don’t know yet,” said Stacy slowly. “That’s the trouble. And I won’t know until I know who’s at the bottom of it. Does anybody know of your affairs with me?”

“No one.”

“No confidential friend, eh?”

“None.”

“No one who has access to your secrets? No—no—woman? Excuse me, Phil,” he said, as a peculiar look passed over Demorest’s face, “but this is business.”

“No,” he returned, with that gentleness that used to frighten them in the old days, “it’s ignorance. You fellows always say ‘Cherchez la femme’ when you can’t say anything else. Come now,” he went on more brightly, “look at the letter. Here’s a man, commercially educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, ‘on receipt of this,’ and ‘advices received,’ which I won’t merely say I don’t use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here’s a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn’t from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don’t write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever writes it in that way. And then the knowledge of my opinion of Barker is such as might be gained from the reading of my letters by a person who couldn’t comprehend my feelings. Now, let me play inquisitor for a few moments. Has anybody access to my letters to YOU?”

“No one. I keep them locked up in a cabinet. I only make memorandums of your instructions, which I give to my clerks, but never your letters.”

“But your clerks sometimes see you make memorandums from them?”

“Yes, but none of them have the ability to do this sort of thing, nor the opportunity of profiting by it.”

“Has any woman—now this is not retaliation, my dear Jim, for I fancy I detect a woman’s cleverness and a woman’s stupidity in this forgery—any access to your secrets or my letters? A woman’s villainy is always effective for the moment, but always defective when probed.”

The look of scorn which passed over Stacy’s face was quite as distinct as Demorest’s previous protest, as he said contemptuously, “I’m not such a fool as to mix up petticoats with my business, whatever I do.”

“Well, one thing more. I have told you that in my opinion the forger has a commercial education or style, that he doesn’t know me nor Barker, and don’t understand slang. Now, I have to add what must have occurred to you, Jim, that the forger is either a coward, or his object is not altogether mercenary: for the same ability displayed in this letter would on the signature alone—had it been on a check or draft—have drawn from your bank twenty times the amount concerned. Now, what is the actual loss by this forgery?”

“Very little; for you’ve got a good price for your stocks, considering the depreciation in realizing suddenly on so large an amount. I told my broker to sell slowly and in small quantities to avoid a panic. But the real loss is the control of the stock.”

“But the amount I had was not enough to affect that,” said Demorest.

“No, but I was carrying a large amount myself, and together we controlled the market, and now I have unloaded, too.”

“You sold out! and with your doubts?” said Demorest.

“That’s just it,” said Stacy, looking steadily at his companion’s face, “because I HAD doubts, and it won’t do for me to have them. I ought either to have disobeyed your letter and kept your stock and my own, or have done just what I did. I might have hedged on my own stock, but I don’t believe in hedging. There is no middle course to a man in my business if he wants to keep at the top. No great success, no great power, was ever created by it.”

Demorest smiled. “Yet you accept the alternative also, which is ruin?”

“Precisely,” said Stacy. “When you returned the other day you were bound to find me what I was or a beggar. But nothing between. However,” he added, “this has nothing to do with the forgery, or,” he smiled grimly, “everything to do with it. Hush! Barker is coming.”

There was a quick step along the corridor approaching the room. The next moment the door flew open to the bounding step and laughing face of Barker. Whatever of thoughtfulness or despondency he had carried from the room with him was completely gone. With his amazing buoyancy and power of reaction he was there again in his usual frank, cheerful simplicity.

“I thought I’d come in and say goodnight,” he began, with a laugh. “I got Sta asleep after some high jinks we had together, and then I reckoned it wasn’t the square thing to leave just you two together, the first night you came. And I remembered I had some business to talk over, too, so I thought I’d chip in again and take a hand. It’s only the shank of the evening yet,” he continued gayly, “and we ought to sit up at least long enough to see the old snow-line vanish, as we did in old times. But I say,” he added suddenly, as he glanced from the one to the other, “you’ve been having it pretty strong already. Why, you both look as you did that night the backwater of the South Fork came into our cabin. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” said Demorest hastily, as he caught a glance of Stacy’s impatient face. “Only all business is serious, Barker boy, though you don’t seem to feel it so.”

“I reckon you’re right there,” said Barker, with a chuckle. “People always laugh, of course, when I talk business, so it might make it a little livelier for you and more of a change if I chipped in now. Only I don’t know which you’ll do. Hand me a pipe. Well,” he continued, filling the pipe Demorest shoved towards him, “you see, I was in Sacramento yesterday, and I went into Van Loo’s branch office, as I heard he was there, and I wanted to find out something about Kitty’s investments, which I don’t think he’s managing exactly right. He wasn’t there, however, but as I was waiting I heard his clerks talk about a drop in the Wheat Trust, and that there was a lot of it put upon the market. They seemed to think that something had happened, and it was going down still further. Now I knew it was your pet scheme, and that Phil had a lot of shares in it, too, so I just slipped out and went to a broker’s and told him to buy all he could of it. And, by Jove! I was a little taken aback when I found what I was in for, for everybody seemed to have unloaded, and I found I hadn’t money enough to pay margins, but I knew that Demorest was here, and I reckoned on his seeing me through.” He stopped and colored, but added hopefully, “I reckon I’m safe, anyway, for just as the thing was over those same clerks of Van Loo’s came bounding into the office to buy up everything. And offered to take it off my hands and pay the margins.”

“And you?” said both men eagerly, and in a breath.

Barker stared at them, and reddened and paled by turns. “I held on,” he stammered. “You see, boys”—

Both men had caught him by the arms. “How much have you got?” they said, shaking him as if to precipitate the answer.

“It’s a heap!” said Barker. “It’s a ghastly lot now I think of it. I’m afraid I’m in for fifty thousand, if a cent.”

To his infinite astonishment and delight he was alternately hugged and tossed backwards and forwards between the two men quite in the fashion of the old days. Breathless but laughing, he at length gasped out, “What does it all mean?”

“Tell him everything, Jim,—EVERYTHING,” said Demorest quickly.

Stacy briefly related the story of the forgery, and then laid the letter and its copy before him. But Barker only read the forgery.

“How could YOU, Stacy—one of the three partners of Heavy Tree—be deceived! Don’t you see it’s Phil’s handwriting—but it isn’t PHIL!”

“But have you any idea WHO it is?” said Stacy.

“Not me,” said Barker, with widely opened eyes. “You see it must be somebody whom we are familiar with. I can’t imagine such a scoundrel.”

“How did YOU know that Demorest had stock?” asked Stacy.

“He told me in one of his letters and advised me to go into it. But just then Kitty wanted money, I think, and I didn’t go in.”

“I remember it,” struck in Demorest. “But surely it was no secret. My name would be on the transfer books for any one to see.”

“Not so,” said Stacy quickly. “You were one of the original shareholders; there was no transfer, and the books as well as the shares of the company were in my hands.”

“And your clerks?” added Demorest.

Stacy was silent. After a pause he asked, “Did anybody ever see that letter, Barker?”

“No one but myself and Kitty.”

“And would she be likely to talk of it?” continued Stacy.

“Of course not. Why should she? Whom could she talk to?” Yet he stopped suddenly, and then with his characteristic reaction added, with a laugh, “Why no, certainly not.”

“Of course, everybody knew that you had bought the shares at Sacramento?”

“Yes. Why, you know I told you the Van Loo clerks came to me and wanted to take it off my hands.”

“Yes, I remember; the Van Loo clerks; they knew it, of course,” said Stacy with a grim smile. “Well, boys,” he said, with sudden alacrity, “I’m going to turn in, for by sun-up to-morrow I must be on my way to catch the first train at the Divide for ‘Frisco. We’ll hunt this thing down together, for I reckon we’re all concerned in it,” he added, looking at the others, “and once more we’re partners as in the old times. Let us even say that I’ve given Barker’s signal or password,” he added, with a laugh, “and we’ll stick together. Barker boy,” he went on, grasping his younger partner’s hand, “your instinct has saved us this time; d–d if I don’t sometimes think it better than any other man’s sabe; only,” he dropped his voice slightly, “I wish you had it in other things than FINANCE. Phil, I’ve a word to say to you alone before I go. I may want you to follow me.”

“But what can I do?” said Barker eagerly. “You’re not going to leave me out.”

“You’ve done quite enough for us, old man,” said Stacy, laying his hand on Barker’s shoulder. “And it may be for US to do something for YOU. Trot off to bed now, like a good boy. I’ll keep you posted when the time comes.”

Shoving the protesting and leave-taking Barker with paternal familiarity from the room, he closed the door and faced Demorest.

“He’s the best fellow in the world,” said Stacy quietly, “and has saved the situation; but we mustn’t trust too much to him for the present—not even seem to.”

“Nonsense, man!” said Demorest impatiently. “You’re letting your prejudices go too far. Do you mean to say that you suspect his wife.”

“D—n his wife!” said Stacy almost savagely. “Leave her out of this. It’s Van Loo that I suspect. It was Van Loo who I knew was behind it, who expected to profit by it, and now we have lost him.”

“But how?” said Demorest, astonished.

“How?” repeated Stacy impatiently. “You know what Barker said? Van Loo, either through stupidity, fright, or the wish to get the lowest prices, was too late to buy up the market. If he had, we might have openly declared the forgery, and if it was known that he or his friends had profited by it, even if we could not have proven his actual complicity, we could at least have made it too hot for him in California. But,” said Stacy, looking intently at his friend, “do you know how the case stands now?”

“Well,” said Demorest, a little uneasily under his friend’s keen eyes, “we’ve lost that chance, but we’ve kept control of the stock.”

“You think so? Well, let me tell you how the case stands and the price we pay for it,” said Stacy deliberately, as he folded his arms and gazed at Demorest. “You and I, well known as old friends and former partners, for no apparent reason—for we cannot prove the forgery now—have thrown upon the market all our stock, with the usual effect of depreciating it. Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the price. A common trick, a vulgar trick, but not a trick worthy of James Stacy or Stacy’s Bank!”

“But why not simply declare the forgery without making any specific charge against Van Loo?”

“Do you imagine, Phil, that any man would believe it, and the story of a providentially appointed friend like Barker who saved us from loss? Why, all California, from Cape Mendocino to Los Angeles, would roar with laughter over it! No! We must swallow it and the reputation of ‘jockeying’ with the Wheat Trust, too. That Trust’s as good as done for, for the present! Now you know why I didn’t want poor Barker to know it, nor have much to do with our search for the forger.”

“It would break the dear fellow’s heart if he knew it,” said Demorest.

“Well, it’s to save him from having his heart broken further that I intend to find out this forger,” said Stacy grimly. “Good-night, Phil! I’ll telegraph to you when I want you, and then COME!”

With another grip of the hand he left Demorest to his thoughts. In the first excitement of meeting his old partners, and in the later discovery of the forgery, Demorest had been diverted from his old sorrow, and for the time had forgotten it in sympathetic interest with the present. But, to his horror, when alone again, he found that interest growing as remote and vapid as the stories they had laughed over at the table, and even the excitement of the forged letter and its consequences began to be as unreal, as impotent, as shadowy, as the memory of the attempted robbery in the old cabin on that very spot. He was ashamed of that selfishness which still made him cling to this past, so much his own, that he knew it debarred him from the human sympathy of his comrades. And even Barker, in whose courtship and marriage he had tried to resuscitate his youthful emotions and condone his selfish errors—even the suggestion of his unhappiness only touched him vaguely. He would no longer be a slave to the Past, or the memory that had deluded him a few hours ago. He walked to the window; alas, there was the same prospect that had looked upon his dreams, had lent itself to his old visions. There was the eternal outline of the hills; there rose the steadfast pines; there was no change in THEM. It was this surrounding constancy of nature that had affected him. He turned away and entered the bedroom. Here he suddenly remembered that the mother of this vague enemy, Van Loo,—for his feeling towards him was still vague, as few men really hate the personality they don’t know,—had only momentarily vacated it, and to his distaste of his own intrusion was now added the profound irony of his sleeping in the same bed lately occupied by the mother of the man who was suspected of having forged his name. He smiled faintly and looked around the apartment. It was handsomely furnished, and although it still had much of the characterlessness of the hotel room, it was distinctly flavored by its last occupant, and still brightened by that mysterious instinct of the sex which is inevitable. Where a man would have simply left his forgotten slippers or collars there was a glass of still unfaded flowers; the cold marble top of the dressing-table was littered with a few linen and silk toilet covers; and on the mantel-shelf was a sheaf of photographs. He walked towards them mechanically, glanced at them abstractedly, and then stopped suddenly with a beating heart. Before him was the picture of his past, the photograph of the one woman who had filled his life!

He cast a hurried glance around the room as if he half expected to see the original start up before him, and then eagerly seized it and hurried with it to the light. Yes! yes! It was SHE,—she as she had lived in his actual memory; she as she had lived in his dream. He saw her sweet eyes, but the frightened, innocent trouble had passed from them; there was the sensitive elegance of her graceful figure in evening dress; but the figure was fuller and maturer. Could he be mistaken by some wonderful resemblance acting upon his too willing brain? He turned the photograph over. No; there on the other side, written in her own childlike hand, endeared and familiar to his recollection, was her own name, and the date! It was surely she!

How did it come there? Did the Van Loos know her? It was taken in Venice; there was the address of the photographers. The Van Loos were foreigners, he remembered; they had traveled; perhaps had met her there in 1858: that was the date in her handwriting; that was the date on the photographer’s address—1858. Suddenly he laid the photograph down, took with trembling fingers a letter-case from his pocket, opened it, and laid his last letter to her, indorsed with the cruel announcement of her death, before him on the table. He passed his hand across his forehead and opened the letter. It was dated 1856! The photograph must have been taken two years AFTER her alleged death!

He examined it again eagerly, fixedly, tremblingly. A wild impulse to summon Barker or Stacy on the spot was restrained with difficulty and only when he remembered that they could not help him. Then he began to oscillate between a joy and a new fear, which now, for the first time, began to dawn upon him. If the news of her death had been a fiendish trick of her relations, why had SHE never sought him? It was not ill health, restraint, nor fear; there was nothing but happiness and the strength of youth and beauty in that face and figure. HE had not disappeared from the world; he was known of men; more, his memorable good fortune must have reached her ears. Had he wasted all these miserable years to find himself abandoned, forgotten, perhaps even a dupe? For the first time the sting of jealousy entered his soul. Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, his strange and varying feelings that afternoon had been the gathering climax of his mental condition; at all events, in the sudden revulsion there was a shaking off of his apathetic thought; there was activity, even if it was the activity of pain. Here was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be discovered, a past wrong to be exposed, an enemy or, perhaps, even a faithless love to be punished. Perhaps he had even saved his reason at the expense of his love. He quickly replaced the photograph on the mantel-shelf, returned the letter carefully to his pocket-book,—no longer a souvenir of the past, but a proof of treachery,—and began to mechanically undress himself. He was quite calm now, and went to bed with a strange sense of relief, and slept as he had not slept since he was a boy.

The whole hotel had sunk to rest by this time, and then began the usual slow, nightly invasion and investment of it by nature. For all its broad verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent influences around it, and became their sport and playground. The mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the damp odor of leaves in the dining-room. There was the cry of night birds in the creaking cupola, and the swift rush of dark wings past bedroom windows. Lissome shapes crept along the terraces between the stolid wooden statues, or, bolder, scampered the whole length of the great veranda. In the lulling of the wind the breath of the woods was everywhere; even the aroma of swelling sap—as if the ghastly stumps on the deforested slope behind the hotel were bleeding afresh in the dewless night—stung the eyes and nostrils of the sleepers.

It was, perhaps, from such cause as this that Barker was awakened suddenly by the voice of the boy from the crib beside him, crying, “Mamma! mamma!” Taking the child in his arms, he comforted him, saying she would come that morning, and showed him the faint dawn already veiling with color the ghostly pallor of the Sierras. As they looked at it a great star shot forth from its brethren and fell. It did not fall perpendicularly, but seemed for some seconds to slip along the slopes of Black Spur, gleaming through the trees like a chariot of fire. It pleased the child to say that it was the light of mamma’s buggy that was fetching her home, and it pleased the father to encourage the boy’s fancy. And talking thus in confidential whispers they fell asleep once more, the father—himself a child in so many things—holding the smaller and frailer hand in his.

They did not know that on the other side of the Divide the wife and mother, scared, doubting, and desperate, by the side of her scared, doubting, and desperate accomplice, was flying down the slope on her night-long road to ruin. Still less did they know that, with the early singing birds, a careless horseman, emerging from the trail as the dust-stained buggy dashed past him, glanced at it with a puzzled air, uttered a quiet whistle of surprise, and then, wheeling his horse, gayly cantered after it.