nor disconcerted when his brother, in the midst of his
speech, placed the candle and the Bible on the table, with two chairs
before it. He listened to Madison's monotonous reading of the evening
exercise with equally monotonous respect. Then they both arose, without
looking at each other, but with equally set and stolid faces, and knelt
down before their respective chairs, clasping the back with both hands,
and occasionally drawing the hard, wooden frames against their breasts
convulsively, as if it were a penitential act. It was the elder brother
who that night prayed aloud. It was his voice that rose higher by
degrees above the low roof and encompassing walls, the level river camp
lights that trembled through the window, the dark belt of riverside
trees, and the light on the promontory's crest--up to the tranquil,
passionless stars themselves.

With those confidences to his Maker this chronicle does not
lie--obtrusive and ostentatious though they were in tone and attitude.
Enough that they were a general arraignment of humanity, the Bar,
himself, and his brother, and indeed much that the same Maker had
created and permitted. That through this hopeless denunciation still
lingered some human feeling and tenderness might have been shown by the
fact that at its close his hands trembled and his face was bedewed by
tears. And his brother was so deeply affected that he resolved hereafter
to avoid all evening prayers.

CHAPTER III.

It was a week later that Madison Wayne and Mr. McGee were seen, to the
astonishment of the Bar, leisurely walking together in the direction of
the promontory. Here they disappeared, entering a damp fringe of willows
and laurels that seemed to mark its limits, and gradually ascending some
thickly-wooded trail, until they reached its crest, which, to Madison's
surprise, was cleared and open, and showed an acre or two of rude
cultivation. Here, too, stood the McGees' conjugal home--a small,
four-roomed house, but so peculiar and foreign in aspect that it at
once challenged even Madison's abstracted attention. It was a tiny Swiss
chalet, built in sections, and originally packed in cases, one of the
early importations from Europe to California after the gold discovery,
when the country was supposed to be a woodless wilderness. Mr. McGee
explained, with his usual laborious care, how he had bought it at
Marysville, not only for its picturesqueness, but because in its
unsuggestive packing-cases