"Well,you can settle a bet for us,I reckon.Bill Dacre thar bet me five dollars and the drinks that a young gal we met at the edge of the Carquinez Woods,dressed in a long brown duster and half muffled up in a hood,was the daughter of Father Wynn of Excelsior.I did not get a fair look at her,but it stands to reason that a high-toned young lady like Nellie Wynn don't go trap'sing along the wood like a Pike County tramp.I took the bet.May be you know if she's here or in Excelsior?"Mr.Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and excitement.But the near prospect of seeing her presently gave him back his caution,and he answered truthfully that he had left her in Excelsior,and that in his two hours'sojourn in Indian Spring he had not met her once."But,"he added,with a Californian's reverence for the sanctity of a bet,"I reckon you'd better make it a stand-off for twenty-four hours,and I'll find out and let you know."Which,it is only fair to say,he honestly intended to do.
With a hurried nod of parting,he continued in the direction of the Woods.When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had entered the settlement,and would not follow him for further explanation,he quickened his pace.In half an hour he passed between two of the gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance to a trail.Here he paused to collect his thoughts.The Woods were vast in extent,the trail dim and uncertain--at times apparently breaking off,or intersecting another trail as faint as itself.Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from the highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade,and that she would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and unknown recesses,he kept within sight of the skirting plain.By degrees the sedate influence of the silent vaults seemed to depress him.
The ardor of the chase began to flag.Under the calm of their dim roof the fever of his veins began to subside;his pace slackened;he reasoned more deliberately.It was by no means probable that the young woman in a brown duster was Nellie;it was not her habitual traveling dress;it was not like her to walk unattended in the road;there was nothing in her tastes and habits to take her into this gloomy forest,allowing that she had even entered it;and on this absolute question of her identity the two witnesses were divided.He stopped irresolutely,and cast a last,long,half-despairing look around him.Hitherto he had given that part of the wood nearest the plain his greatest attention.His glance now sought its darker recesses.Suddenly he became breathless.Was it a beam of sunlight that had pierced the groined roof above,and now rested against the trunk of one of the dimmer,more secluded giants?No,it was moving;even as he gazed it slipped away,glanced against another tree,passed across one of the vaulted aisles,and then was lost again.Brief as was the glimpse,he was not mistaken--it was the figure of a woman.
In another moment he was on her track,and soon had the satisfaction of seeing her reappear at a lesser distance.But the continual intervention of the massive trunks made the chase by no means an easy one,and as he could not keep her always in sight he was unable to follow or understand the one intelligent direction which she seemed to invariably keep.Nevertheless,he gained upon her breathlessly,and,thanks to the bark-strewn floor,noiselessly.He was near enough to distinguish and recognize the dress she wore,a pale yellow,that he had admired when he first saw her.It was Nellie,unmistakably;if it were she of the brown duster,she had discarded it,perhaps for greater freedom.He was near enough to call out now,but a sudden nervous timidity overcame him;his lips grew dry.What should he say to her?How account for his presence?"Miss Nellie,one moment!"he gasped.She darted forward and--vanished.
At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards from her.He rushed to where she had been standing,but her disappearance was perfect and complete.He made a circuit of the group of trees within whose radius she had last appeared,but there was neither trace of her,nor a 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!"
