stood, was void; it met the requirements of neither church nor state. Yet-yet-yetthere were possibilities; her family were powerful, her wealth was great. Doña Feliz watched her with deep, enquiring eyes. Her child stood there, a voiceless pleader, her utter abandonment of grief appealing to the heart of the mother; but between them was the impregnable wall of pride. She came to no determination, made no resolve, but clasping her hands over her eyes, stood as if a gulf had opened in her path, from which she could not turn, and over which she dared not pass. Slowly, at last, she dropped her arms, resumed her usual composure, and passed from the room. For some moments the little group she had left remained motionless. A profound stillness reigned throughout the house. Time it self seemed arrested, and the one word breathed through the silence seemed to describe the whole world to those within the walls. "Dead! dead! dead!" V. As Doña Isabel Garcia turned from her daughter's apartment, she stepped into a corridor flooded with the dazzling sunshine of a perfect morning, and as she passed on in her long black dress, the heavily beamed roof interposed between her uncovered head and the clear and shining blue of the sky, there was something almost terrible in the stony gaze with which she met the glance of the woman servant who hurried after her, to know if she would as usual have the desayuno served in the little arbor near the fountain. It terrified the woman, who drew back with a muttered " Dispensame, Señora!" as the lady swept by her, and entered her own chamber. The volcano of feeling which surged within her burst forth, not in sobs and cries, not in passionate interjections, but in the tones of absolute horror in which she uttered the two names which had severally been to her the dearest upon earth-" Leon!" and "Herlinda!"—and which at that moment were equally synonymous of all most hated, most dread ed, and yet were the most powerful factors amid the love, the honor, the pride, the passions, and prejudices which controlled her being. For a time she stood in the center of her apartment, striking unconsciously with her clenched hand upon her breast, blows that at another time would have been keenly felt, but the swelling emotions within rendered her insensible to mere bodily pain. Indeed, as the moments passed it brought a certain relief; and as her walking to and fro brought her at last in front of the window, which opened upon the broad prospect to the west, she paused, and looked long and fixedly towards the reduction works, as if her vision could penetrate the stone walls, and read the mind which had perished with the man who lay murdered within them. As she stood thus, she presently became aware that a sound-which she had heard without heeding, as one ignores passing vi brations upon the air, that bring no special echo of the life of which we are active, conscious parts was persistently striving to make itself heard; and with an effort she turned to the door, upon which fell another timid knock, and bade the suppliant enterfor the very echo of his knocking, proclaimed a suppliant. She started as her eyes fell upon the haggard face of Pedro the gatekeeper. He entered almost stealthily, closing the door softly behind him. "Señora," he whispered, coming up to her quite closely, extending his hands in a deprecating way. Señora, by the golden keys of my patron, I swear to you I was powerless. He told me he had your Grace's own authority; he told me they were married!" Doña Isabel started. In the same sentence the man had so skillfully mingled truth and falsehood that even she was deceived. By representing to his mistress that Ashley had used her name to gain entrance to the hacienda, he had hoped to divert her anger from himself-and what matter though it fell unjustly upon the dead man? But in fact, the second phrase of his sentence, "He told me they were married," was what struck most keenly upon the ear of Doña Isabel, and chilled her very blood. How much, then, did this servant know? How far was she in his power? Until that moment, she had not knownno one had suspected that the murdered man and the murderer had been within the walls of the hacienda buildings. Partly to learn facts which might guide her, partly to gain time, she looked with her coldest, most petrifying gaze, upon the man, and asked him what he meant, and bade him tell her all, even as he would confess to the priest, for so only he might hope to escape her most severe displeasure. As she spoke, she had glided behind him and slipped the bolt of the door, standing before the solid slab of unpolished but timedarkened cedar, a very monument of wrath. Pedro trembled more than ever, but was not for that the less consistent in his tale of mingled truth and falsehood. He had begun it with the name, "The Señorita Herlinda," but Doña Isabel stopped him with a portentous frown. "Her name," she said, my daughter's name need not be mentioned. I know the woman John Ashley came here to see; the Señorita Herlinda had nothing to do with her, nor with your tale. Proceed." Pedro, not so deeply versed in the dissimulation of the higher class as was Doña Isabel in that of the lower, looked at her a moment in utter incredulity. He learned nothing from her impassive face, but with the quickwittedness of his race divined that one of the many dark-eyed damsels who served in the house was to be considered the cause of Ashley's midnight visits. In that light, his own breach of trust seemed more venial. Unconsciously, he shaped his story to that end, and even took to himself a sort of comfort in feigning to believe, what in his heart he knew to be an assumption - whether merely verbal or actual he knew not-of Doña Isabel. The arguments by which he had been induced by Ashley to open the doors of the hacienda for his midnight admittance, he would have dwelt on at some length, but Doña Isabel stopped him. "Tell me only of what happened last night," she said; and in a low whisper he obeyed, shuddering, as he spoke of the man whom he had admitted under the guise of a peasant, and who had rushed out to encounter the devoted American, as a madman, or very wild beast might rush upon its prey. At his description, eloquent in its brevity, Doña Isabel for a moment lost her calmness; her face dropped upon her hands; her figure shrank together. "Pedro !" she murmured, "Pedro ! you knew him? You are certain ?" she continued in a low eager voice. "Certain, Señora! Should I be likely to be mistaken? I, who have held him upon my knees a thousand times, who first taught him to ride, who saw him when-" Doña Isabel stopped the enumeration with a gesture. She paused a moment in deep thought; then she extended her hand, and the man bent over it, not daring to touch it, but reverently, as if it were that of a queen or a saint. "Silence, Pedro !" she said. One word, and the law would be upon him—though God knows there should be no law to avenge these false Americans, who respect neither authority nor hospitality, and would take our very country from us. Pedro, this deed must not be done in vain-'t was a mistake! but as you live, as I pardon you the share you bore in it, keep silence!" The words were not an entreaty; they were a command Doña Isabel understood too well the ascendency which, as lords of the soil, the Garcias held over all who had been born and bred on their estates, to take the false step of lessening it by any act of weakness. She comprehended that that very ascendency had led him to open the gates to the husband of Herlinda-ay! as to her lov er he would have opened them. It was the house of Garcia he served, not one or many individuals; though, as occasion offered, he might be dominated by either. Doña Isabel was at this hour the controlling power, and with absolute genius, in a few wordsadmitting nothing-explaining nothing—of fering no reward--she made that conscience- in; the marriage, if marriage there had been, stricken and terrified man the keeper of the was secret, unrecorded, illegal. Conscience honor of the powerful house of which he was was satisfied, and Doña Isabel was content but the veriest minion. to be passive. Why rouse a scandal which could so easily be avoided? Why strive to prove a marriage which could but bring ridicule upon herself, and shame and contempt upon Herlinda? He went out of her presence perplexed, baffled, dazed, with but one word and one thought clear in his mind-"Silence!" Ten minutes later Doña Isabel sent for the administrador, and an hour thereafter Doña Feliz left the hacienda. Three days passed, days of apparent calm at the great house, overshadowed, perhaps, by the tragedy that had occurred so near it. During these, Doña Isabel, her daughters and the governess sat together, Herlinda at times fixing her eyes with a look of horror upon the wall, or clasping her hands convulsively; so that the servant who passed in and out declared to her fellows below that she was certain that French woman was reading, in her heathenish language, some tale of dread, which must be badly chosen at such a time, when every drop of blood in the hearts of her pupils must be cold with horror. At the end of those three days Doña Feliz returned. Wherever her journey had led her, it had outwardly been unimportant enough to draw but little comment from the men who had attended her, and was speedily forgotten; and she herself gave no description of it, nor volunteered any information as to its object or result. Even to Doña Isabel, who raised inquiring eyes to her face as she entered her private room, she said, briefly, "No, there is no record; absolutely none." Doña Isabel sank back in her chair with a deep drawn breath, as if some mighty tension, both of mind and body, had suddenly relaxed. She had herself sought in vain through the papers of Ashley for proofs of the alleged marriage with Herlinda, and Feliz had scanned the public records with vigilant eyes. Part of these records had in some pronunciamiento been destroyed by fire, but the book containing those of the date she sought was intact. The names of John Ashley and Herlinda Garcia did not appear there That day, for the first time in many days, Doña Isabel could force a smile to her lip; for even for policy it had not been possible for her to smile before. She was by nature neither cold nor cruel, but she had been brought up in the midst of petty intrigues, of violent passions and narrow prejudices ; and while she had scorned them, they had moulded her mind, as the constant wearing of rock upon rock forms the hollow in the one, and rounds the jagged surface of the other. What would have been monstrous to her youth became natural to her middle age. She had suffered and striven. Was it not the common lot of woman? What more natural than that her daughter should do the same? and what more natural than that the mother should raise her who had fallen?— for fallen indeed, in spite of the marriage, would the world think her. But why should the world know? She pitied her daughter, even as a woman pities another in travail; yet she looked to the future, not to the present, and so silently, relentlessly, shaped her course, ignoring circumstance, and like a goddess making a law unto herself, and thus unflinch ingly ordered the destiny of her child. Could she herself have divined the various motives. that influenced her? Nay: no more, perhaps, than the circumstances which may be developed in this tale may make clear the mother's love, the woman's purity, the highborn lady's pride, that all combined to bid. her ignore the marriage, which, however irregular, had evidently been made in good faith; and for which, in spite of open malice or secret innuendo, the power and influence of her family could have won the Pope's sanction, and so silenced the cavilings of the world. [CONTINUED IN NEXT NUMBER.] Louise Palmer Heaven. A CRUISE ON A CAYUSE. If the camel is the "ship of the desert," the cayuse is the yacht of the prairies. He is not for a pack, but a passenger. He is at the door, and I am ready for the ride. It is a May morning. The air is crystal. The forests are fresh. The birds are mirth ful. The journey is inviting. It is to be a gallop through Eastern Washington-the newest Northwest. I I make my mount at the door of a friend, a dozen miles south of Spokane Falls. vault upon the back of a saddled something. What is it? A cayuse. What is a cayuse? An angel if humored-a devil if resisted-a blockhead-a Machiavelli. I saw hundreds of him. I talked with many men about him. I fed him, and rode him, and studied him, but never could I find him out. His origin is lost in antiquityhis reputation in the same. His name is not in our largest dictionary, nor his pedigree in any standard work I have seen. In descent he may be a degenerate of the English horse, as the mustang is of the Spanish. He is the Indian among horses. Every Indian on the Spokane plateau has his cayuse, as every Bedouin in the Orient has his Arab. They are personal friends, and equals in all things. They have a common bed and board, and common aims in life. To eat, to drink, and to have their own way—these are the be-all and end-all of their existence. But to be specific: my mount is an iron gray-weight, seven hundred pounds-black eyes and banged foretop-ears notched into four points-strong, stocky. "How far will he carry me in a day?" I ask. "As far as you can ride him," answers the owner. Then comes a volley of facts about neighbors who have ridden cayuses seventy miles a day, for ten days at a stretch. "What shall I feed him?" "When you stop, picket him out on the bunch-grass." "Does he buck?" "Every cayuse bucks!" "Does he bite?" "Of course he bites!" "Kick?" "Kicks!" I have learned enough to start on-although I found my Strongbow (for so I named the cayuse after the first mile) was somewhat better than his reputation. "Equo ne credite Teucri"-I remembered the advice of Laöcoon as I lifted the riding switch and said "Go." Strongbow moved not a muscle. "Git!"-I punctuated it with a cut of the whip. Nothing moved but the ears of the beast. "G'lang!" I meant it. With a lunge I am off-not on the ground as I had feared but on my cruise. We whiz along through a handsome forest of pine, and past the cabins of settlers, who have a year or two before begun their homes on "Gov'ment land." At the end of three miles we strike the Hangman Creek, and follow its current by a winding road. With all these forest settlers the problem is to get rid of the timber. Here is a great pile of logs drawn together by oxen. "What will you do with it?" I ask the woodman. "Burn it." And so they burn thousands of cords of wood and immense amounts of lumber material, while not three miles away is the edge of a great prairie, two hundred miles across, which in ten years will demand for its settlers all that these forests can supply of wood and lumber, and more. ever thus. Possibly Providence permits the waste in order to stimulate the inventive powers of the next generation, and so develop the other resources of Nature in fuel and building material. But, 'twas Here is a saw mill. It has a circular saw which is turned by the euphonious Hangman. "How are you selling common lumber?" The question was flattering, because there was no possibility at that mill of anything but common lumber. and two or three educational institutions being already built on the north side. The town is flanked on the south by a steep bluff fringed with pines. Up the side of this bluff "Eight dollars a thousand, and haul it the houses are creeping on their way toward yourself." We canter under a trestle of the Northern Pacific Railway, and in a few minutes rise out of the cañon of the creek, and enter the suburbs of Spokane Falls. "It is one of the handsomest town-sites in America." So I had read-so now I see. Its advantages flash upon you at the first glance. The Spokane River rises in Lake Coeur d'Alêne, in the Pan Handle of Idaho. It flows one hundred miles northwest, and falls into the Big Bend of the Columbia River. One-third the distance down from its source it suddenly divides into seven streams, and rushes down a series of cascades and short falls. Then it reunites all its forces, and makes a last leap of sixty-five feet into the chasm below. This division of the stream just at the beginning of its descent furnishes a most wonderful water-power. The power of the stream is one-quarter greater than at Minneapolis, where the Father of Waters exhibits his greatest strength in the Falls of St. Anthony. This is said, by residents, to be the best practical water-power on the continent. As you look north across a pleasant vega some miles in width, a border of blue mountains forms the horizon. The river valley above the Falls is a level, gravelly plain, two or three miles wide, and stretches straight away, thirty miles to Lake Coeur d'Alêne. Right and left, as we look up the river, the hills and mountains frame the valley. The water of the river is clear as light, and full of the finest salmon trout. Coeur d'Alene Lake is the clear source of the Clear River, and is a magnificent sheet of water, more than twenty-five miles long, whose depths are alive with fish. It is already a resort for summer campers and tourists from near and far. On a gravel plat a mile long, and half a mile wide, south of the Falls, stands the main part of the town-some fine residences the level summit, which will ultimately be the grand habitat of the moguls of Spokane. The streets of the town will never need grading, and will never make mud nor dust. The Northern Pacific Railway passes directly through the place, at the foot of the bluff-the depot is only five minutes' walk from the post office. Immense stores and many handsome brick blocks make one think he is in a second-sized city, and not in a sixyear-old town of the newest Northwest. I see the hose companies throwing streams from the hydrants two hundred feet into the air, the water being drawn from the river above. I am reminded where I am, by the groups of Indians on every business corner. As I approach one corner a sleek cayuse is galloped along the street by his Indian owner. As he returns to the corner, a miner at my elbow sings out: "How much, Injun?" "Twenty dollar." "Give ye eighteen !" And after a moment, the bargain is clinched at eighteen dollars. Very superior riding animals are to be had for twenty-five, and often lower. The saddle is the heavier expense in a riding outfit, a good one costing at the Falls about thirty dollars. I notice in the house yards, large growths. of strawberry and potato and pea vines, though it is early May, and the latitude is forty-eight degrees north. The day is just one hour longer than at San Francisco. I walk down to the river and take position in the middle of the bridge which spans the stream. It is almost directly over the great fall, and as I stand in the flying mist and amid the hollow thunder of the waters, I have a view almost as grand, and fully as picturesque, as that of Niagara. Above, the waters are rushing and tumbling for a quarter of a mile in seven different channels, and down ten times seven cascades. The rocky islands turning and changing these currents |