The Fire Flower

In ten lines was an article “of interest to the scientific world,” announcing that Professor Hamilton, representing the interests of the newly endowed College of Entomology, an institution whose aims “are the pervestigation into the rarer varieties of the lepidoptera flying in the North American altitudes over 7,000 feet,” was preparing for an expedition into the less known regions of the Canadian northwest.

Here was matter of interest to John Sheldon. That such a clipping should be found upon the wall of a log cabin in the Sasnokee-keewan in itself set him musing. But as he stood looking at it other thoughts, more closely connected with the matter in his mind, suggested themselves. Perhaps the madman had also been a scientist, an entomologist, hence a man of education. That would explain how it came about that Paula spoke an English which was not that of a rough miner.

But another chance discovery brought Sheldon closer to the truth. The cupboard door was open. In plain sight upon a low shelf was a thick volume. Sheldon took it up. It was an abstrusely technical treatise upon butterflies by Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., and was dedicated:

“Good Lord!” muttered Sheldon.

To be sure there might have been no end of explanations beside the one which presented itself to him first. But here was a tenable theory, one to which he clung rather more eagerly than he as yet understood.

The madman was no other than Charles Francis Hamilton, entomologist of note about 1860. Not only had the man not always been mad, but at one time had a brilliant mind. He had come into the unknown parts of the great Northwest, so much of which is still unknown to-day, even though men have made roads through it. And there he had lost his sanity.

One could conceive of some terrible illness which had broken the man and twisted his brain hideously, or of an accident from which merely the physical part of him had recuperated, or of some terrible experience such as is no stranger in the wilderness, hardship on top of hardship, starvation, perhaps, when a man is lost and bewildered, some shock which would unseat the reason.

Somewhere he had found Paula. It might be as she herself said, that he was her father; that he had brought her, a little girl, into the mining country. Or it was quite as conceivable that he had “acquired” some little motherless, fatherless waif, no blood kin to him, and had reared her as his own daughter, naming her “Paula.” In any case, it was made clear why she did not use the speech of the illiterate.

And it was equally obvious that the girl might be sane.

“Of course she is!” said Sheldon, disgusted with himself for his perfectly natural suspicions. “What girl raised in a place like this all her life by a madman wouldn’t be a trifle—different?”

And with renewed interest and impatience he awaited their return. Meanwhile he turned the pages of the book slowly. Here and there he came upon a slip of paper, yellow with the years, upon which were notes set down neatly and in a small, legible hand. For the most part these notes consisted of Latin names and abbreviations which meant nothing to John Sheldon. Against each annotation there stood a date. These dates went back as far as 1868; some were as recent as 1913.

“Get an alienist and an entomologist together over this thing,” thought Sheldon, “and they could figure to the day when Hamilton went mad!”

For distinctly the more recent notes were in the same hand but not inspired by the same brain as the earlier ones. In the latter there was the cold precision of the scientist; in the others the burning enthusiasm of a madman.

A note in the body of the text awoke in Sheldon this train of thought. Under the heading Papilioninae (The Swallow Tail Butterflies) there was written in lead pencil:

Sheldon turned a couple of pages. Here were further notes under a new heading, Sub-family Parnassiinae. The words were:

Sheldon shook his head and sighed. To him the penciled words were strangely pathetic. So plainly was there to be seen the working of the scientific brain which sought to tabulate important facts in connection with the new Parnassian, so evident the insane cunning which compromised by putting down a string of crosses to baffle him who might come upon these notes.

Sheldon stared out through the open door, his gaze going over the dead, forgotten town, and to the little lake lying languid in the sunshine. For the instant he forgot Charles Francis Hamilton and his thoughts were all for Paula.

A girl reared in the solitude, taught the weird, wild fancies of a madman, accepting insanity for infallible wisdom! How should a man deal with such as she must be? If Midas died—then what?

“Would she go with me back to the world?” he wondered. “Or is the rest of her life to be that of a wild, hunted thing? Even if I can find her, which is extremely doubtful, can I convince her that the strongest beliefs of her whole life are wrong?”

In truth he found that his perplexities were but growing. But with his jaw set he vowed to himself that if he did find her he’d take her out with him if he had to bind her with a rope, like the wild thing she was. Suddenly there came to him through the stillness a long-drawn cry of pure terror. It came from far off, back of the cabin toward the mountainside.

Rifle in hand Sheldon ran out of the house and plunged into the forest.

CHAPTER XI. THE GOLDEN EMPEROR’S FLIGHT.

The hope which stood high in John Sheldon’s breast was short lived. There was that one cry, undoubtedly Paula’s, then only the silence broken by Sheldon’s crashing through the bushes. Now and then when he stopped to listen he heard only his own heavy breathing.

But he pushed on, deeper into the woods. Her voice had floated to him clearly; she could not be very far away, and he knew the general direction. But when he came at last to the foot of the mountain where there were long lines of low cliffs he had found nothing. And, although he did not give up as the hours passed and the sun turned toward the west, his search went unrewarded.

He went back and forth along the base of the cliffs, fearing that she had fallen, that that scream had been whipped from her as she plunged over a precipice. He breathed more easily when he could be assured that this was not the case. After a while he even called out to her, crying “Paula! Where are you? I won’t hurt you.” But there was no answer.

Why had she cried out like that? One suspicion came early and naturally. Perhaps to draw him away from the cabin so that she or the madman could slip back to it. He had retraced his steps when the thought came to him, running. But as before there was no sign that another than himself had recently visited the house.

Late in the afternoon great black thunder clouds began to gather upon the mountain tops. They billowed up with the wind-driven swiftness of a summer storm, piling higher and higher until the sky was blotted out.

A peal of thunder, another—deep rumbles reverberating threateningly. A drop of rain splashed against his hand. He could hear the big drops pelting through the leaves of the trees; scattering drops kicked up little puffs of dust in dry, bare spaces. A forked tongue of lightning thrust into the bowels of the thick massed clouds seemed to rip them open. The rain came down in a mighty downpour. The rumble of the thunder was like the ominous growl of ten thousand hungering beasts.

The lightning stabbed again and again, the skies bellowed mightily, the forest shivered and moaned like a frightened thing under the hissing impact of the sudden wind. The dry ground drank the water thirstily, but even so, little rivulets and pools began to form everywhere. The rain, like a thick veil blown about by the wind, hid the mountains or gave brief views of them. For fifteen minutes the storm filled sky and forest noisily. Then it passed after the way of summer showers, and Sheldon came out from the makeshift shelter of a densely foliaged tree.

He was a mile or more from Johnny’s Luck. The storm over, he turned back on his trail again, determined to gain the cabin before the daylight was gone, to wait there again for those for whom it was futile to search. Then the second time, unexpectedly, he heard Paula’s voice calling.

“Where are you?” it cried. “Oh, where are you?”

He stepped out of the trail, slipping behind a giant pine. She could not be a hundred yards away; he thought that she was coming on toward him, that she was running.

The world was filled with a strange light from the lowering sun shining through the wet air, a light which shone warmly like gold, which seemed to throb and quiver and thrill as it lay over the forest. It gave to grass and tree a new, vivid green, a yellow flower looked like a burning flame. Out of a fringe of trees into a wide open space Paula came.

She came on, running with her own inimitable, graceful swiftness, until she was not a score of paces from him. Here she stopped abruptly, looking this way and that eagerly, listening. Sheldon, his heart hammering from his own eagerness, stood still. If she came a little nearer—

“Where are you?” she called again. “Man from the world outside, where are you?”

Sheldon stared in amazement. She was calling him, she was seeking him, running to him!

Before he could answer, her quick eyes had found him out. With a strange look in them which he could not fathom, she ran to him. She was in the grip of some emotion so strong that she was no longer afraid of him, so that she laid her hand for the fraction of a second upon his arm as she cried brokenly:

“Come! Come quickly!”

“What is it?” he demanded, wondering. “What do you want? What is the matter?”

“You must help him,” she answered swiftly. “He says to bring you. But you must hurry. Run!”

Again she had touched him, was tugging at his sleeve. He looked at her curiously, even suspiciously, not unmindful of the bear-pit of this morning. But her eyes were wide with alarm not inspired by him, alarm too sincere to be mistrusted. Since all things are possible, it might be that the madman had sent her to lure Sheldon into some further danger. But there was only one way to know.

“Go on,” he said crisply. “I’m with you.”

She turned then and sped back the way she had come, Sheldon running at her heels, she turning her head now and then, accommodating her pace to his. This way and that they wove their way through the forest. In a little they were again under the cliffs standing upon the eastern rim of the valley. In the open now, he carried his rifle in two hands, ready.

But here at least was no trap set for him. Paula, running on ahead of him, now suddenly had dropped to her knees, and for the first time Sheldon saw the prone body of the madman. The girl had taken his head into her lap and was bending over him; the gaunt, hollow, burning eyes blazed full at Sheldon. And they were filled with malice, with lurking cunning, with suspicion, and unutterable hatred. But the man made no effort to rise. Sheldon came on until he stood over him.

“He fell from the cliffs?” he asked, looking down for a second into the eyes of Paula which, filled with anguish, were turned up to him.

She sought to answer, but her voice broke; she choked up and could only shake her head. He looked away from her to the head resting in her lap. There was reason enough for the dread in Paula’s breast; the man was dying!

“Tell me,” said Sheldon softly, “can I do anything for you? Is there any way I can help you?”

The burning eyes narrowed. The old man lifted a shaking hand and pushed the tangled beard away from his lips.

“Curse you!” he panted. “Why are you here?”

“Why, father!” cried Paula. “You told me to bring him!”

“Him?” It was a mutter, deep in the throat, labored and harsh. “You were to get a doctor, girl! This man is a thief, like the others. He comes to steal our fortune from us.”

Both bewilderment and terror stared out of the girl’s eyes. Her hand on the old man’s brow drew the matted hair back, smoothed and smoothed the hot skin.

Fully realizing the futility of seeking to reason with unreason, nevertheless Sheldon said gently: “I didn’t come to steal anything. I was just loafing through the country, got lost, and came here.”

“Liar!” scoffed the other. “I know what you want. But you can’t have it; it is my secret!”

“But, Father,” pleaded Paula, her lips trembling, “why did you send me for him if he—”

“Mr. Hamilton,” began Sheldon.

The old man frowned.

“Hamilton?” he muttered. “Who is Hamilton? Where is Hamilton?”

“You are,” said Sheldon stoutly. “Don’t you remember? Charles Francis Hamilton, professor of entomology in Brownell University?”

“Brownell University?” There came a thoughtful pause. “Yes; of course. I am Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., M.D., professor of entomology. Who said that I wasn’t?”

“Then, Dr. Hamilton, you ought to be able to tell by looking at me,” and Sheldon grinned reassuringly, “that I am no scientist! I don’t know the difference between a bug and an insect; I swear I don’t! I’m just a mining engineer out of a job and down on the rocks.”

“Then,” querulously, “you didn’t come looking for—”

“For the Parnassius Aureus Giganticus?” smiled Sheldon. “No. And though you may not believe it, I don’t come looking for gold either!”

His words had a strange, unlooked-for effect. He had hoped that they might a little dispel suspicion. Instead, the madman jerked away from Paula’s hands, sought to spring to his feet, and achieved a position half-kneeling, half-squatting, his whole body shaken, a wild fury in his eyes.

“My Parnassius!” he shrieked. “My Parnassius! He comes to steal it away from me; it and my immortality with it! Curse him and curse him and curse him! He knows; he has stolen my secret. He says ‘Parnassius Aureus Giganticus’! He knows its name, the name I have given it. He says ‘Gold!’ He knows that the Parnassius is to be found only where the mother lode of the world is bared! That there is a little invisible mist, a vapory elixir, which rises from gold in the sun, and that my Parnassius lives upon it, drinks it in, and that that is why it is immortal! He knows; curse him, he knows, he knows!”

He was raging, wildly; his words came in a tumbled fury of sound like the fall of waters down a rocky cliff; his body grew tense to the last muscle, and then shook again as with an ague. Paula, upon her feet now, her hands clasped in a mute agony of suspense, turned frightened eyes from him to Sheldon.

Slowly the wreck that was Charles Francis Hamilton, one time man of scientific note, straightened up; the tall, gaunt form, swaying dangerously, stood erect. A terribly attenuated arm was flung up, then the forearm drawn across the brow as though with the motion which pushed back the streaming white hair he would clear the burning brain too.

Then, just as Sheldon was prepared for a mad attack of the pitifully broken figure, the pale lips parted to a cry such as he had never in all his life heard. It was a cry of pure triumph; the voice was wonderfully clear now and went ringing through the silence like a bell’s tinkling notes. The eyes, too, were clear, bright as before, but now triumphant, like the voice, untroubled, filled with the sheer ecstasy of perfect gladness.

“Look!” cried the madman. “It is the Golden Emperor of Infinity! Look! He is coming—to me!”

Erect, he no longer swayed. The long right arm thrown out, pointed toward the western sky and was rigid, unshaken. For the moment the figure was dominant, masterful; the gesture demanded and received obedience. In his final moment, Charles Francis Hamilton stood clothed in conscious power, unshaken in a great faith—triumphant. There was no other word for him then.

“Look!” cried the madman.

But was he mad?

For both Paula and John Sheldon turned and looked—and saw what the old man saw. There in the strange, weird light in the west, clear against the sky, were a great pair of wings flashing like pure beaten gold, as a graceful, speeding body described a long, sweeping curve, seemed for a moment to be dropping below the mountain-tops, then rose, climbing higher and higher.

Higher and higher—until it was gone, until, as the wide wings trembled in the vault of the clearing heavens, John Sheldon saw that they were no longer beaten gold, but just the feathered wings of a great eagle, metamorphosed for an instant by a trick of sun.

But it was gone. Gone with it the soul of a madman. Without a cry, his old lips forming into a smile indescribably sweet, his eyes still bright with victory, he stooped, stooped farther, his legs weakened under him, he settled down, rested a moment, fell backward. His Golden Emperor of the Infinite had borne away upon its golden wings the soul which craved and now won—immortality!

“He is dead!” said Paula lifelessly. “He is dead!”

More moved than he had thought to be, Sheldon knelt by the quiet body. The fretful pulse was still, the tired heart was at rest, the fever-ridden brain slept.

“Yes,” he said quietly as, kneeling, he removed his hat and looked up pityingly into Paula’s set face. “He is dead. Poor little Paula!”

She stared at him with her eyes widening in eloquent expression of the new emotions in her breast. She stood very still, her hands clasped as they had been when the old man rose to his feet. Her brown fingers were slowly going white from their own steady pressure. Sheldon could only wonder gropingly what this tragedy would mean to her. Other girls had lost fathers before now; but when had a girl lost every one she knew in the world as Paula had lost now?

There was nothing for Sheldon to say, so he remained a little kneeling, his head bowed in spontaneous reverence, waiting for the burst of tears from her which would slacken the tense nerves. But it did not come. Presently Paula drew nearer, knelt like Sheldon, put her two warm hands upon the cold forehead. Sheldon saw a shiver run through her. She drew back with a sharp cry.

“Dead!” she whispered. “Dead!”

“Poor little Paula,” he said again in his heart. Aloud he said nothing.

After a while he got to his feet and went away from her, dabbing at his own eyes as he went, grumbling under his breath. He wanted to take her into his arms—as he did the twins, Bill and Bet—to hold her close and let her cry, and pat her shoulder and say, “There, there!” There was much of kindness and gentleness and sympathy under the rough outside shell of John Sheldon, and it went out unstintedly to a slip of a girl who was alone as no other girl in all the world.

When he came back she was sitting very still, her hand patting softly one of the cold, lifeless hands. She looked up curiously, speaking in a quiet whisper:

“He will never wake up?”

“Not in this world,” answered Sheldon gently. “But maybe the soul of him is already awake in another world.”

“Where the Golden Butterfly went?” whispered Paula.

“You saw it?”

“Yes. With beautiful wings all of gold. Father knew it was like that. Has his soul gone away with it? Up and up and beyond the clouds and through the sky and to the other world?”

And John Sheldon answered simply, saying:

“Yes, my dear.”

Paula was very still again, her eyes thoughtful.

“What will we do with—him?” she asked after a long silence, the first hint of tears in her eyes.

Then he told her, explaining as he would to Bill and Bet, as one talks with a credulous child, hiding those things upon which man is so prone to look as horrible, showing as best he knew that there is beauty in death. He spoke softly, very gently with her, and her eyes, lifted to him, might have been those of little Bet.

“You will get flowers for him,” he said at the end. “Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. You will put them all about him; we will make him a pretty, soft bed of them; we will cover him with them. And every year, in the spring, other flowers will grow here and blossom and drop their leaves on his place. And—and, little Paula, maybe he will be watching you and smiling at you and happy—”

It spite of him his voice grew hoarse. Paula sat now with her face hidden in her crossed arms. He could see a tear splash to her knee.

When the sun rose after the long night it shone upon a great mound of field flowers hiding a lesser mound of newly turned earth, and upon a golden-brown maiden lying face down in the grass, sobbing—and upon a new John Sheldon.

For into his life had come one of those responsibilities which make men over and, together with the responsibility, a tumult of emotions born no longer ago than the dewdrops which the morning had hung upon the grass.

CHAPTER XII. GOLDEN EMPEROR’S BAIT.

During that tragic day Sheldon never lost sight of the bewildered girl—she seemed just breathless and stunned rather than grief-stricken—for more than half an hour at a time. He watched over her while seeming to be busy rifle cleaning or fishing for a trout for luncheon. Now and then he spoke, just a little homely word of no importance other than the assurance to her that she was not utterly alone. Not once did she return an answer or offer a remark.

In the late afternoon she brought great armfuls of fresh flowers, heaping them upon the wilted ones. As night came on she stood looking wistfully at them for a long time. Then she turned and, walking swiftly, went back to Johnny’s Luck. John Sheldon went with her.

They had their supper together, sitting opposite each other at the crude table. Paula ate little, nibbling absent-mindedly at the slab of chocolate, pushing the fish aside untasted, drinking the water set before her. Sheldon made coffee, and she watched him curiously as he drank the black beverage; but she did not taste it.

“Look here, Paula,” he said when the silence had lasted on until after he had got his pipe going, “We’ve got some big questions ahead of us to answer, and we can’t begin too soon now. After all, death comes to us all, soon or late; it came to your father’s father and mother; it has come to mine; it will come to you and me some day. While we live we’ve got to be doing something. You’ve got to decide what you are going to do. I am going out of here in a few days, and you can’t stay here all alone.”

“I can,” she answered steadily. “I will.”

“Come now,” he objected, speaking lightly; “that’s all wrong, you know. It can’t be done. Why in the world should a young girl like you want to live all alone here in the wilderness? Before, when your father was with you, it was different. Now what is there to stay for?”

“I shall stay,” said Paula gravely, “until some day the big golden butterfly comes and takes me away, too.”

“How would you live?” he asked curiously.

“As I have always lived. We have the traps father and I made. I could make others. I know how to catch fish. I know many plants with leaves and roots good to eat when you cook them in water.”

“But what would you do all the time?”

“Why,” said Paula simply, “I would wait.”

“Wait?”

“Yes. For the big butterfly.”

Then Sheldon set himself manfully to his task. He sought to reawaken the interest which she had shown when he spoke of the world outside; he spoke of the thousand things she could see and do; he told her of other men and women; of how they dressed, of how they spent their lives, of their aims and ambitions, of their numerous joys; of aeroplanes and submarines; of telephones and talking machines; of music and theaters and churches. But Paula only shook her head, saying quietly:

“I shall stay here.”

“And never see any children?” asked Sheldon. “Little babies like Bill and Bet; little roly-poly rascals with dirty faces and bright eyes and fat, chubby hands? You’ll miss all that?”

“I’ll stay here,” said Paula. “This is my home.”

And no further answer did he get that night.

As her weary body, which had known so little rest during the last two days, began to droop in her chair, Sheldon left her, going to spend the night out in the open in front of the cabin. Paula closed the door after him, saying listlessly, “good night,” in response to his.

“You are not afraid of me any longer, are you, Paula?” he asked as he left her.

“No,” she answered. “I am not afraid of you now. You have been good to me.”

When, in the morning, he came to the cabin the door stood open. When he called there was no answer. When he went in the cabin was empty.

Even then he did not believe that she had again fled from him. He went hurriedly through the woods until he came to the heaped-up mound of flowers, fearing a little, hoping more that he was going to find her here. But, though he looked for her everywhere, he did not find her; though he lifted his voice, calling loudly, she did not answer.

It was a weary, empty day. At one moment he cursed himself for not having guarded against her flight; at the next he told himself that he could not always be watching her, and that there was no reason why he should have suspected that she was going to slip away now. When some little sound came to him through the still forest he looked up quickly, expecting to see her coming to him. When she did not come he wondered if he would ever see this wonderfully dainty, half-wild maid again.

All day long he did not give over seeking her, calling her. He grew to hate the sound of his own voice bringing its own echo alone for answer. He began to realize what her going meant; he began to see that he wanted not only to take her with him back into his own world, but that he wanted to give up that life to showing her the world he had told her about. He wanted Paula.

He tramped up and down until he covered many a mile that day. He ransacked his pack for any little articles of food which might be new to her, and they remained upon the cabin table untouched.

Noon came, and afternoon and evening, and without Paula he was lonely, he who had come far from the beaten trails to be alone!

In the early night he builded a fire in the cabin’s fireplace for the light and companionship of it, and sat staring into the flames and smoking his pipe, and all the time listening eagerly. A dozen times he thought that he heard her light footfall. But she did not come.

He got up and went to the door, standing long looking out into the quiet night, star-filled. The moon was not yet up. The night was so still, so filled with solitude, that he felt a sudden wonder that a girl, even a girl like Paula, could be far out in it, alone.

Where was she? Lying face down in the thick of the woods, crushed with the loneliness which had touched even him? Or sitting somewhere in the starlight, her lovely face upturned, her deep eyes seeking to read the eternal riddles of the stars and the night, her soul grasping at vague thoughts, her mind struggling pitifully with the problems of life and death?

All night he sat before the fire, dozing now and then, but for the most part listening, waiting. When morning came he made a hurried breakfast, and, his plan for the day formed during the hours of darkness, left the cabin.

He had come to the conclusion that there must be some hiding-place, some shelter other than the cabin, which Paula and her father had used. To that place, no doubt, the madman had fled when he had sought to avoid Sheldon; thither, perhaps, Paula had gone last night.

It might be another cabin, far out; it might be a cave in the cliffs. Sheldon inclined to the latter belief. At any rate, he told himself determinedly that he would find this retreat, and that in it he would discover those belongings of the men Hamilton had killed, their knives and rifles, their boots, perhaps. And he hoped to find Paula.

He went straightway to the cliffs near which Dr. Hamilton had died. They stretched a mile or more to both north and south. Sheldon admitted to himself at the beginning that he had his work cut out ahead of him; thorough search here for the mouth of a possible cave might consume weeks. But all the time in the world was his. He set about his task methodically.

All day he climbed in and out among the boulders and spires of rock. At night he had found nothing. He returned to the cabin and, throwing himself upon the bunk which had once been Dr. Hamilton’s, slept soundly.

In the morning he went out again, beginning his search where yesterday’s had ended. That day passed like the other, ended as it had done. In the forenoon he killed a young buck that had come down to the creek to drink, skinned it, and hung the meat upon the limb of a tree to dry, building a smudge under it.

“If I have to stay here until snow flies,” muttered Sheldon, “well, then, I’ll stay!”

A week passed. During it he had had no sign that Paula existed—no hint of the theoretical “hiding-place” which he sought. But each day he spent long hours in the quest, striving from the first glow of dawn to the coming of dusk. He had searched out every spot of the cliffs to the south, climbing high up, looking everywhere. Now, in the same systematic way, he turned toward the north. And upon the second day of the second week he came upon part of that which he sought—that and something else.

Upon a broad ledge a score of feet from the ground, hard to climb up to, grew a dense clump of bushes. Only because it was his plan to look everywhere did he go up there at all. On the ledge he saw at once what, from below, had been masked by the bushes.

There was a great hole into the cliff-side through which a man might walk standing erect. Beyond, where dim dusk brooded at midday, was the cave. A glance, as he went in, showed that it was part nature’s work and part man-made. At his feet lay a shovel with fairly fresh dirt adhering to it. Beyond was a pick. Other picks and shovels, several of them, lay at one side of the long chamber.

“Paula!” he called softly. “Are you here?”

But Paula was not there. As he moved on deeper into the cavern he saw that no one was there. There were two tumbled piles of blankets, one on each side. Against the wall by one of them were five rifles, all of old patterns, not one an automatic. He picked them up, one after the other. None was loaded; there were no unfired cartridges with them.

Several sharpened stakes had been driven into the walls which Sheldon found to be of clay almost rock-hard. From these pegs hung cured skins of both deer and bear, wildcat skins, the pelts of other animals. From one was suspended a gay little array of old, old-fashioned gowns like those in pictures of our grandmothers. Sheldon sighed, touched them lingeringly, and called again, “Paula!”

He passed on down the length of the cavern, which had been driven thirty or forty feet into the mountainside. At the far end a pick was sticking into the wall. Near the pick was a bag made of deerskin. He struck it with his foot. It was heavy, seemed filled with small stones. Wondering, he turned the contents out upon the floor.

And, at the sight disclosed there to him in the dim interior of this gloomy place, the soul of John Sheldon, mining engineer, adventurer into the far-out places, thrilled within him.

The bag was half-filled with gold nuggets.

“Bait for a madman’s trap!” he said aloud, huskily. “To catch the Golden Emperor of Space!”

He went down on his knees, the gold caught up into his hands, his eyes bright with the old, forgotten, but never dying, fever. He ran back to the cave’s opening, carrying his hands full, staring at the yellow crumbling particles, light-stricken. He had never seen such gold; he had never believed gold existed like this.

He whirled and hastened back into the cavern, going to the bag which still lay on the floor. The pick, still in its place, caught his eye. He jerked it out, breaking away a dozen handfuls of the hard clay. He struck the clay with his boot-heel, breaking it apart. And from the fragments which he carried to the light there shone up at him the dull yellow of gold.

The old, old fever rode him hard, having taken him thus unaware, leaping out upon him from the dark of the unexpected. His hands shook with it. He had found gold before; he had known the wild fires it sets in a man’s brain. But never had he found gold like this, never had he known so seething a tumult.

“All men look for the mother lode!” he whispered. “Why shouldn’t it be waiting somewhere for the man who can find it? Why shouldn’t this be it?”

He had forgotten Paula. A man forgets everything when he finds gold, much gold, pure, yellow virgin gold. Often enough he ceases for the moment to be a man, and is like a wild beast hungering, tearing at bloody meat.

He went here and there eager and breathless, driving the pick into the time-hardened clay, taking with shaking hands the earth he dug out, muttering to himself as he found again and again that there was in it the glint and gleam of gold.

“There is nowhere in the world a man so rich as I!” he whispered. And then he thought of Paula.

He went out upon the ledge outside, and sat down in the sunshine and lighted his pipe. This gold was not John Sheldon’s unless John Sheldon were utterly contemptible. It was Paula’s. Her birthright. Was he the man to rob a woman? The man to cheat a girl? A girl like Paula? He shook his head.

“I was drunk on the cursed stuff!” he said half-angrily.

But if Paula did not come back? If, look as he might, days came and went, the summer passed, and Paula did not come back and he could not find her?

Then a curious fact presented itself to John Sheldon. It was this: If he were confronted with a choice in the matter, if he had to lose the wealth untold lying at his finger-tips or lose forever the golden-brown maiden—why, he could snap his fingers at the gold!

“Something has come over me!” he grunted at the thought.

He had never been more right in his life. In his own words, something had come over him.

CHAPTER XIII. CONSUMMATION.

A month passed, and John Sheldon, who might have taken the gold and left the girl, let the gold lie and sought Paula.

They were lonely days, and more than once he went to his horse for companionship. The provisions which he had brought in with him had dwindled away to nothing. His coffee was gone; he drank water for breakfast. His bacon was but a haunting memory. Beans and onions and potatoes were with the snows of yesteryear.

He missed them, but could manage upon venison and trout. But, especially after meals and before he turned in at night, when he looked into the black and empty bowl of his pipe, he shook his head and sighed.

Verily, a mighty thing is a man’s love for a woman! For, even when his tobacco was a thing of the past, John Sheldon, a man who loved his smoke, stayed on and contented himself with sunflower leaves!

He had once said, “I’ll stay if I have to wait until snow flies!” Now he said, “I’ll find her if I have to stick on the job all winter.”

There were days when he roamed for miles into the mountains; nights when he slept far out, as Paula was perhaps sleeping. Again, there were times when he slept in the cabin or at the mouth of the cavern, on the ledge.

Many a time, at dusk, he climbed to some peak to look down over the valley and distant ridges, hoping to see somewhere the blaze of her fire. Day after day he sought some other cave, some other distant cabin where, perhaps, she was hiding; where it might be that supplies had been cached against such a time as this. But the month went and another was well on the way, and his search was fruitless.

There came a soft night, throbbing with star radiance, glowing with the promise of a full moon, just rising beyond the eastern ridge, when Sheldon, tired and spiritless, came back into Johnny’s Luck from a long tramp to the north.

As he trudged back along the trail he had come to know so well he told himself that he was all kinds of a fool; that if he were not he’d put all the gold upon Buck’s back that a horse could stagger under, take upon his own shoulders all that he could carry, and go back to Belle Fortune and the world beyond.

But he knew that he would not go; that he would remain there until he found Paula or knew that she was dead. Lately he had come to fear that one of the innumerable possible accidents had befallen her.

Head down, weary and hopeless, he made his slow way toward the cabin. He was within a score of paces from the house when he stopped with a sharp exclamation, standing staring.

She was there. She had heard him, was before him to the door, had come out into the night to meet him. The man stood looking at her in bewilderment. For here was no Paula whom he knew; no brown maiden of the bearskin; no boyish slip in miner’s boots and clothes.

Oddly, the memory of something he had seen years ago and many miles from here, came into his mind vividly. He had once found one of those strange plants called the fire-flower which flourish in bleak desolation, companionless; a wonderful creation with burning, blood-red heart, which upon the barren sweep of lava-beds is at once a living triumph and a mystery of loveliness.

This girl, here alone in the land of abandoned ruins and lonely, desolate isolation, was like that.

The Fire Flower!

Paula came on, taking short little steps which alone made her some new Paula. He looked down and saw a pair of incredibly small slippers, seeming brand new, flashing in the moonlight. He looked up and saw Paula smiling!

“I have come back to you,” said Paula, “because you are good and I love you. Are you glad?”

She had come back to him like a great lady out of an old love-story. Her hair was in little, old-fashioned curls; her neck and throat gleamed at him modestly from the laces and ribbons which bewildered him; upon her brown fingers were dainty mitts of 1870, and the gown itself, it was an elaborate and astounding ballgown, all wide hoops and flounces, so that she seemed to him to be riding out to him upon a monster puff-ball. That her costume should, to the last detail, be like that of the lady of the picture, she carried in her hand a fan.

Paula with a fan! Paula in hoop-skirts!

“You are not glad?” cried Paula, her lips, which had been curved to her laughter, suddenly trembling.

“Glad!” cried John Sheldon. “Glad!”

And, a hundred things clamoring for expression, that was all that he said. Paula put her head to one side, like a bird, and looked at him. He looked at her, her curls, her sleeves, her ribbons, her fan—

Then Paula, gifted with understanding, laughed.

“Are you afraid of me now?” she asked softly.

“Before God—yes!” muttered Sheldon huskily.

“Kiss me!” said Paula.

She put up her red mouth temptingly, her eyes teasing and gay. And Sheldon hesitated no longer and was afraid no longer, but took her into his arms, hoop-skirts and flounces and ribbons and laces and all, and held her tight, tight.

“Oh!” laughed Paula. “You are like a bear. You hurt, and you will ruin my dress. I have saved it always—always and always—for—”

“For what, Paula, dear?” he asked.

“For to-night—for you!” she answered, her voice an awed whisper like his own.

“But you didn’t know—”

“Oh, I always knew! Some time you would come, a man tall like poor father, and strong—and young—and beautiful! I would dream of it sometimes and it would make me shiver, like cold. Like you make me shiver now!”

“Oh, my dear, my dear,” said Sheldon. “And I have been afraid you would never come back; I have walked mile after mile looking for you.”

“I know!” nodded Paula brightly. “I watched you every day.”

“What!” he cried.

“Oh, yes. I will show you to-morrow where I hid. It is up there in the rocks; another cave like the one you found—but you could never find this one unless I showed you, it is so cunningly hid. And every day I watched you. And one day I saw you go into the forest and come back with a strange, terrible beast bigger than a black bear following you, and I was afraid and screamed. I thought that it would eat you and—”

“Beast?” asked Sheldon.

“Yes. But you had caught it and tied a rope around its neck and were its master. Oh, I was glad I was so far away you didn’t hear me. And proud that you were so strong a man, so brave a man to capture a big beast, bigger than a bear—”

“Buck! It was my horse, child! And you don’t even know what a horse is?”

“No,” answered Paula, wondering. “Do they bite?”

“This one you shall ride—”

“I won’t!” cried Paula. “I’ll run away!”

Laughing, they turned together to the cabin, where he soon had a splendid fire going.

“Why did you wait all these days before coming back?” he asked her.

“Because,” she told him, “I was afraid at first. But I saw you were good; you did not hurt things just to be bad; when you passed close enough to me I could see that your face was kind.”

“Go on,” grinned Sheldon. “Don’t stop there!”

“And,” she ended happily, “I wanted to see what you would do. Whether you would go on looking for me a long time, or whether you would forget me and go away.”

“And if I had gone?”

“Then,” said Paula simply, “I should have gone high up on the cliffs and thrown myself down. It would not have been much fun to live if you had gone away.”

“And now,” he asked her soberly, “are you afraid to go back with me, Paula? Back into the world outside?”

Paula crept closer up to him, putting her hand into his.

“Yes,” she said. “I am afraid.”

“But,” insisted Sheldon, “you must see, Paula—”

“I am afraid,” she repeated, and as he turned toward her he saw that her eyes, lifted to his, were shining softly with utter trust. “I am afraid, but I will go with you and be glad.”

“God bless you!” he whispered.

“Tell me something,” she said presently. “Something I have not asked you, but have wanted to know.”

“Yes, Paula. What is it?”

He wondered just how far back in his life history that question was going to search. She made herself comfortable in his arms. Then she asked her question:

“Have you a name, too?”

“What!” he replied, taken aback. “Don’t you even know my name?”

“No,” sighed Paula, the sigh bespeaking a vast and somewhat sleepy content. “What is it?”

“It is John Sheldon,” he told her.

“Then—some day—I will be Paula John Sheldon?”

“Just as soon,” cried John Sheldon, “as you and I can get to the nearest priest on the Little Smoky! And we start in the morning!”

“Aha, mes enfan’s,” said the Father Dufresnil to the two other old men with whom he chummed at the settlement on the Little Smoky. (It was ten days later.) “The worl’ is fonny! To me to-day there comes out of the woods a man, such a man, tall an’ big an’ his face like a boy, glad! An’ with him a lady—oh, mes enfan’s, a lady of beauty, with eyes which dance like the eyes of him! An’ this lady, she is dress’ like the gran’-mother of ol’ Thibault there—in a ball gown! An’ I, when I marry them! Oh, there was not to doubt the love in their four eyes! But see what that big man put in my han’!”

He dropped it to the oilcloth of the table.

It was a real golden nugget.