reserved and
deliberate silence. Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break
in upon a reverie she could not help but feel had little kindliness to
herself. As the fire snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head upon a
root, and lay still to watch it.

It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow, and
again, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them, quickening
into a roaring flame. When only the embers remained, a dead silence
filled the wood. Then the first breath of morning moved the tangled
canopy above, and a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from the
interlocked boughs winged their soft way noiselessly to the earth. A
few fell upon the prostrate woman like a gentle benediction, and she
slept. But even then, the young man, looking down, saw that the slender
fingers were still aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe
of his hunting-shirt.

CHAPTER II.

It was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Wood that it stood apart and
distinct in its gigantic individuality. Even where the integrity of its
own singular species was not entirely preserved, it admitted no
inferior trees. Nor was there any diminishing fringe on its outskirts;
the sentinels that guarded the few gateways of the dim trails were as
monstrous as the serried ranks drawn up in the heart of the forest.
Consequently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare
and shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and
refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and willows. It was here the
newly-born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant
Hercules, strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American river,
and turned its life-current into the ditches and flumes of the
Excelsior miners.

Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed its
single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev. Winslow Wynn,
not unfrequently known as "Father Wynn," pastor of the first Baptist
church. The "pastorage," as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring
distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly
pointed out by idle scoffers, the only "fireproof" structure in town.
This sarcasm was not, however, supposed to be particularly distasteful
to "Father Wynn," who enjoyed the reputation of being "hail fellow,
well met" with the rough mining element, who called them by their
Christian names, had been known to drink at the bar of the Polka Salo