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be found in the fact that the triple team settled back in the breeching, as if they scented danger, and the stage stopped with a jerk that startled everybody into an alert attitude. Conversation ceased, and "What is the matter?" had run the whole gamut of anxiety before the checking of the coach had sent a final shiver through the lengths of harness.

Evidently there was matter enough, though Miss Eastlake was only conscious of a mysterious presence. The night was so dark that she could discern nothing save a line of embankment, sparsely tufted with pines. From this indefinite region came an official-like order,

"Throw off the box."

The Wells, Fargo Express instantly crashed to the ground, with a thud that caused more than one passenger to turn pale.

"Hands up!" and simultaneously, a flash of light showed space crystallizing into a medley of gloved and ungloved hands.

"Step out, gentlemen !" continued the unseen, and all at once Miss Eastlake became overwhelmingly aware that the gleaming barrels of a shotgun pointed the request.

Instinctively she cowered away from it; for centuries of sex timidity had left an indubitable imprint that even force of character could not overcome. Before she had recovered from the stunning effect of facing a dangerous weapon, the entire load of men had vacated the coach, and stood ranged in a line with bedticking masks over their faces. Then there was a confused impression that these sightless victims submitted to the further outrage of being robbed; but they seemed to be merely enacting some thrice-read tale, rather than figuring in an actual drama. The whole affair was conspicuously barren of any elements of

heroism, and now that the paralyzing conditions of surprise were beginning to wear off, the occurrence presented itself in a farcical light.

How absurd all those various types of nationality appeared, standing like helpless babies, while a single shadow rifled their persons without a particle of resistance on their part! She and the widow were not compelled to submit to the indignity of being blindfolded, so that as soon as she was able to shake off the stupor, which had at first enthralled her senses, Miss Eastlake's professional instinct rose superior to every other feeling, and made her study details with cool, impartial eyes.

The rays of a bull's-eye lantern brought into prominence a ludicrous looking group of men, who appeared more like maskers going through some voluntary farce, than men in peril of their lives; and this effect was enhanced by the obscurity that enveloped their mysterious assailant, rendering him (or them) all but invisible. Indeed the nearest approach to anything tragic in the scene was the frightened little mother, keeping shuddering guard over a sleeping cherub.

It is characteristic of females that they are always intolerant of foibles in their own sex, and being of a cool, unemotional temperament herself, Miss Eastlake was disposed to entertain a certain disesteem for exhibitions of feeling. She had a rather distinct conviction that people who could not maintain a composed exterior were only half-educated; and having had time to remember that weak womanhood was exempt from the penalties imposed upon the stronger sex, she mistook her sense of security for courage. This pleasant conceit led her to question the bravery of men who submitted to being robbed without even a protest. It appeared to her like the veriest coward

ice on their part; and she became unreasonably indignant with the male passengers in general, and Ralph Greyburn in particular, for being overawed by a single bandit.

While these changing thoughts trooped tumultuously through Miss Eastlake's brain, the highwayman conducted his own affairs with such businesslike dispatch, that his plucked victims were clambering into the coach again before her indignation cooled. The noise awoke the baby, and she gave a frightened little outcry. In some inexplicable way the sound reminded Miss Eastlake of the startled sensation she had experienced at the outset, and she felt troubled by a humiliating misgiving lest she might have betrayed her shrinking fear of that menacing weapon. It had been a mere motion, but it mortified her to think that she had so far forgotten herself, the more so because she was helpless of opportunity to prove that dauntless blood flowed in her veins.

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These final reflections were indulged in while they sat silently waiting for the signal that they were free. The bull'seye light had been sheathed for a full minute, and the power that had presented itself as a mysterious shadow had relapsed into the Egyptian darkness from which it sprung. A rustle in the wayside brush, growing momentarily fainter and fainter, denoted that the express box was being removed to a distance, and suspense was giving way to a feeling of intense relief, when a voice. once more broke the obscurity with the unexpected question,

"How did the State go?"

The nearness of the voice startled Miss Eastlake; and the singular question from the lips of an outlaw made her feel a hysterical inclination to laugh. While she was endeavoring to repress this inherent nervous tendency, one of the

passengers gave the required information, whereupon an ejaculation more forcible than elegant disclosed the politics of the mountain assessor. They were at variance with Miss Eastlake's views, and it roused her wrath to reflect that this robber, and men like him, took an interest in the ballot, and even had the power to help elect officers that winked at their nefarious practises for the sake of their political support, while she, a righteous-minded female, was debarred from casting a vote.

A woman has less tame sensibilities than a man, and however quick of comprehension or self-possessed she may be, is liable to be unnerved by excitement, and expose her weak points when there seems to be the least occasion for it. Conflicting emotions had been brought to the surface within the hour, that had strained her fortitude to the utmost; and in a sudden reaction Miss Eastlake gave way to a dominant impulse under the mistaken impression that she was evincing a fearlessness, which she suspected her male companions of lacking.

"I am glad that such a rapscallion as you are does not belong to the party I favor," she said with contemptuous boldness.

She was vaguely conscious that Ralph Greyburn made a significant gesture to stop her, but she was too excited to heed the warning; and the words were out before she fairly realized that the speech was devoid of a proper dignity.

The silence that greeted it was appalling. Not a sound broke the profound stillness, except the faint click of the slide in a lantern, and Miss Eastlake's face was again subjected to a searching scrutiny. The moment was growing interminable, when the bandit at length. said in a voice that was blandly malevolent:

"Madam, I regret to be obliged to

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"I will relieve you of your earrings." Miss Eastlake reluctantly unscrewed the diamond solitaires, that had been twinkling temptingly in her small lobes. Her finger rings followed, and not until she was stripped of every article of value did the robber cease his demands.

It was a very crestfallen creature that laid the last tribute in the hand held out to receive it; and it was with a cool politeness that was absolutely exasperating that the extortioner said in tones of womanly sweetness:

"Thank you, Madam. Good night." It was the signal that they were free; and after waiting until the sound of a viewless cycle died into an echo of movement far down the rocky cañon, the driver cracked his whip, and the impatient horses bounded eagerly ahead.

Miss Eastlake had a distressing suspicion that her misfortune afforded her fellow passengers a sly amusement, and her mouth seemed struggling with a

brackish taste when the first comment broke the painful silence.

"Is that the up-to-date American style of conducting highwayism?" asked the English tourist, as if seeking for information.

"I reckon it's a new gang,- that of Burly Bill's widder. Burly Bill's widder. Great Scott! I never counted on seein' women take to the road fur a livin'," drawled a grizzlebearded man.

There was a confusion of electrified exclamations, which at length settled into the query,

"Do you mean to tell me that a dozen of us men have been made to unload by a woman?"

"Wa'al, I reckon that 's about the size of it. A man never did hev much show when he got cornered by a woman ; an' now invens hun is helpin' 'em with bicycles, an' bullet-proof jackets, I mean ter shake this road 'till the railroad ez finished."

At that instant the coach whirled around a sharp curve, and taken off her guard, Miss Eastlake lurched into Mr. Greyburn's arms.

"I beg your pardon," she said, lifting her abashed eyes. Their glances met in the sympathetic communion that is so provocative of friendly relations; and he remarked in a voice that vainly strove to keep an inflection of merriment out of it,

"This is a progressive age.'

"And men's privileges are not always agreeable," was the lady's quick rejoinder.

Emma Mersereau Newton.

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.'

A CHARACTER SKETCH BY JOAQUIN MILLER.

[A request to Mr. Miller for some word of greeting to publish, expressing his feeling for Charles Warren Stoddard on his return for a visit to California, resulted in his giving the OVERLAND a somewhat modified copy of his tribute to Stoddard, published in the daily papers at the time when the Catholic University of America chose a Californian professor of English. "Take that," Mr. Miller said, "I could not write anything better or truer today, even if I should try!"

It is hoped that OVERLAND readers will be glad to have this tribute in permanent form.

ED.]

Now that Charles Warren Stoddard,

the poet and traveler, is buried, hidden away out of sight, and beyond all bothering or bother, let us kindly creep around into his back yard and examine the old boots there, inspect the bones there, and see what we can find or imagine of "the world and the flesh and the devil" in good old orthodox obituary fashion. Let us dig everything up, drag everything out, real or imaginary, pile all in a heap and then generously pardon him; not entirely to show how bad he was, indeed, but to show how good and forgiving we are. Let us say, as Rogers, the banker poet, said over the bones of Byron, the better of the two in other things as well as art:

Who among us all, tempted as thou wert, Would not have sinned as much or more than thou?

See frontispiece.

Charley, our Charley, our poet, our wicked, wicked poet, was a contradiction from the first. from the first. Born in Boston, the California University instead of Harvard became his alma mater. Reared a strict Protestant by the gentlest and most exact Presbyterian parents, he became the most devout and most entirely devoted Catholic I ever knew. Born of a stock that had been for generations cold and quiet Yankees, he spent his life. under the blazing path of the sun. The billows of the South Sea or the burning sands of Arabia were his home until the end, from the day he left the university. Charles Warren Stoddard became known to the world, all the white world, except California, the land he celebrated, while still a boy, by the publication of a thin book bearing the imprint of a San Francisco house - A. Roman, the founder of our OVERLAND MONTHLY. I have not the book at hand and it can only be had at the libraries now — under the modest title of "Poems."

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This was about a quarter of a century ago, and although California has given many books to the world since, as she had before, California has had nothing said of her so unique, so poetical, so prettily artistic as you may find between the covers of this boy's first book. True, the great big world has said bigger things, mightier thoughts have thundered from

The grand old masters, the bards sublime,
Whose footsteps echo down the corridors of time.
But this little book was so loyal to
California. See the color and contour of

the brown hills that stand shoulder to shoulder under the burning sun,

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Like Arabs in their cloaks of leather. He sang the sea and the sky of California, the color of California, in this first book the only real book on California that has yet been written - from hill to hill. He celebrated the majestic march of the seasons here. Holmes, Whittier, Longfellow, and other "kings of thought," have sung the goldenrod and the maple leaf and all the perfect colors that mark the lines between the seasons of the Atlantic so continually and so lovingly and so loyally, and have done their work so vividly and well, that travelers and writers for the press have learned to say there are no seasons in California, or colors either. Much the same as some writer, who saw the world from a carwindow, said not long since that California had no songbirds, while in truth and in fact she has nearly every songbird on earth.

Aye, we have the seasons, we have the songbirds, we have a thousand things and a thousand themes; but we have had, so far, only this one poet who has been entirely in earnest and entirely Californian. Here is the first flag of the invading armies of autumn:

White caravans of clouds go by
Across the desert of bright sky.
What Mecca are they hastening to?
What princess journeying to woo?

But I am too cunning to dig up out of memory any more of these little cameos of California. They put my own work. to a disadvantage, and so it is unwise in me to switch off from the story of his life to his work.

One day Charles Warren Stoddard stopped singing and stopped celebrating California as suddenly as a clock might stop. I am not authorized to say why. But I remember the time and the occasion when he told me he would cease to

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