suggestion of her mode of escape. He called aloud to her; the vacant
Woods let his helpless voice die in their unresponsive depths. He gazed
into the air and down at the bark-strewn carpet at his feet. Like most
of his vocation, he was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his
fashion. Comprehending in one swift but despairing flash of intelligence
the existence of some fateful power beyond his own weak endeavor, he
accepted its logical result with characteristic grimness, threw his hat
upon the ground, put his hands in his pockets, and said--

"Well, I'm d--d!"




CHAPTER III.


Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching Indian
Spring, had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously set
down his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams. When it had
closed on the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled
away, Miss Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change in
her usual quiet demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch her business
promptly, and, leaving an impression that she would call again before
her return to Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped away
through a side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.
In passing this emporium, Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a cheap
brown linen duster hanging in its window. To purchase it, and put it
over her delicate cambric dress, albeit with a shivering sense that she
looked like a badly folded brown-paper parcel, did not take long. As she