them growing old, with no refuge but the poorhouse, they who had once ranked so high in the valley, and had abandoned everything to be like Christ.' Of course the exasperation was still there, but it was that of a mother for erring children, touched with tears, and sacred in its tenderness.

To provide for them was as much a part of her desire as any advancement for herself; her richer wooers were astonished at her calm, clear demands; she meant to be no penniless drudge, she said, having to ask for every dollar. What did Willie or Tommy or Eddie intend to settle on her? This scandalous attitude towards matrimony caused her to be savagely criticised; it was called unwomanly, and worse; parents in control of purse-strings were horrified, and said No, with Pennsylvania-Dutch firmness and finality. But Christie, biding her time and conscious of her value, was at last justified; though accepting in the meanwhile, and with the same sweet smiles, all the candy, gloves, and little offerings that might be persuaded to come her way.

Yes, the beggar maid, quietly waiting, was destined to attract the eyes of a king. He was a big, breezy, fine-looking king of forty-five, named George H. Bender, who on his way to the Bohemian Club Grove had caught a glimpse of Christie from the car-window. A mining magnate and thus accustomed to quick decisions, the king darted off the train and stammeringly made himself acquainted with the lovely beggar maid. Three days afterwards they were married in the Lutheran Church, and then left for San Francisco.

Sant' Inez heard little of Christie after that, for it was not a community that did much letter-writing. If the Rothmullers received an occasional postcard, with Love and greeting from your devoted Christie,' they were very happy, and later on acknowledged it with another: Love and greeting from Papa and Mamma.' Christie's only real correspondent in Sant' Inez was Sam Ford, a drunken, disreputable, brilliant old scapegrace who edited the localBanner.' Sam Ford had once been a man of mark in San Francisco journalism, but drink had ruined him, and he had crept away to the foothills, wrecked in health and reputation. Christie and he were fast friends in spite of the disparity of years, and in his genial cynicism and knowledge of a wider world the girl had found much to attract her.

Now, in her altered circumstances, it was to Sam she turned to help her in a matter very close to her heart. He agreed to overlook the three-roomed cottage on the county road-to see

that meat, bread, groceries, and milk were regularly delivered; that the Rothmullers were both warmly clad; that the constant inroads made on their benevolence were as promptly replaced from the local shops. To give either money was next to useless; it went as fast as it came. Sam's duty was to keep them comfortable in spite of themselves—a whiskified guardian-angel hovering over the old folks.' He mailed a weekly report, often humorous but always kindly, with an underlying sympathy and appreciation of the little drama in which he was so incongruous an element.

Every year or two Christie paid a short visit to Sant' Inez, a dazzling, richly clad apparition from another existence. She had grown excessively fashionable and elegant; Paris and London were as familiar to her as San Francisco; she travelled in special cars, in Imperial suites on the great liners; was the beautiful Mrs. Bender' of the press. Yet she came to the little cottage without even a maid; rolled up her sleeves and helped in the housework; sat on the edge of her father's chair at night with her arm around his neck, unmindful of his coarse pipe or calloused hands; ordered about her mother with playful imperiousness, and winning that old heart anew by her saucy charm and tender, pretty ways.

Then she was gone again, and the cottage, awakened for a week by her sparkling, vivid presence, subsided into its usual calm; though her memory lingered under the low rafters, and sometimes Papa Rothmuller would forget to light his pipe after supper, gazing up instead dreamily from the arm-chair; while the old wife, bent over her sewing, was silent too, thinking of Christie.

One day, as Sam Ford was opening his San Francisco exchanges, some staring headlines caught his eyes that stunned him. The paper shook in his hand. What was all this about Christie ? Accused of poisoning her husband-locked in a cell of the city prison-her husband dead and his body held for examination! Three columns of it, gloatingly sensational, and venomous in the accumulated evidence of a crime-previous quarrels, an illicit love-affair now blazoned shamelessly to the universe, the frustrated attempt to make the murder pass for suicide. The case against her grew deadlier and more incriminating with every line. Great God, she was guilty!

There was a note from her that had arrived in the same mail, Ford tore it open, breathless and trembling. Sam, dear Sam,' it ran, 'you will have seen the papers, and know the horror I am in.

But it is the thought of them that kills me-Papa and Mamma. Sam, they must not know. You must save them from knowing. Surely it can be managed, and Sam, you must, you must, for the sake of the wretchedest woman alive.-Christie.'

Ford caught up his hat and walked out with the idea of getting a badly needed bracer at the 'Good Fellows' Grotto' across the street. But happening to see Father O'Rourke, the Catholic priest, he called to him to stop, and brokenly read Christie's letter aloud. Father O'Rourke took fire with it. Mrs. Rothmuller had once nursed him through smallpox when not a soul would come near him, and he had for her a gratitude, a veneration that transcended words. Sam got no bracer, but was carried off to see the Rev. Wolfert Schneider, the Lutheran minister. Now if the devil, in whom he implicitly believed, had suddenly appeared before the Rev. Wolfert Schneider, breathing brimstone and lashing a forked tail, he could not have been more surprised nor affronted than at the sight of Father O'Rourke on his front stoop.

But the priest, deeply moved, ignored the other's sullen trepidation. They were both men, he said, both leaders in the little community, and here was something on which surely all Christians could agree. The three left the house together, eager confederates -the austere Mr. Schneider in his badly fitting frock-coat, the burly Irishman, the pale, red-nosed journalist-a self-constituted committee to carry out Christie's wish, and enforce a boycott of silence on Sant' Inez.

They invaded the shops and offices-the High School, the bank, the livery stables, the Chinese quarter, the creamery, winery, and gas-works. They stopped farmers on the street; talked to labourers resting on pick and shovel; entered the three saloons and gained over the white-coated bar-keepers. Everywhere they were met with the same goodwill, with the same deep, hearty sympathy. Who was there indeed who did not respect the Rothmullers? Who was there who did not love them? Many who listened were roused to confidences that gave a fresh impetus to the movement.

'Help?' exclaimed Rosenberg, the Jew clothier. Why, dat old feller used to feed me when I hadn't a cent on earth!'-' I guess Mrs. Rothmuller all same God,' said Ah Chong the laundryman, artlessly irreverent. Always, oh, welly good lady to sick Chinaman--all same sick Chinaboy's mother.'

Thus started, the news spread to the hills, reaching every farm

house, cabin, and tent within ten miles of Sant' Inez. Farmers carried it on their big, high wagons; school children carried it; brakemen carried it the length of their division; swarthy Mexicans, jingling huge spurs, carried it; lumbermen, gathered picturesquely about their fires, sent runners to further camps. The Rothmullers were to be protected; the valley, from end to end, was in a conspiracy to keep them in ignorance of Christie's dishonour and trial for murder.

Over six thousand men, women, and children, of every nationality and every creed, were enlisted in that single purpose. Surely the Rothmullers had not lived in vain, nor been as foolish in their belief as many thought, when six thousand people, not all of them good by any means, and some exceptionally rough and lawless, could pay such homage to an old man and woman in an adobe hut.

Of course Sam Ford had to print a full report of the case in the Banner.' It was stirring all California; was holding every one in daily suspense; was telegraphed and cabled broadcast everywhere. But he called Christie Mrs. Bell'; and preferably, as often as he could, alluded to her as the accused.' The Rothmullers followed the case as assiduously as anyone, little suspecting it was their own daughter who stood in the dock. The night they read the judge's sentence of death they prayed for that unknown woman-for Christie, huddled and fainting on her plank bed.

'We implore Thy compassion for this unhappy creature,' said the old man on his knees. In this dreadful hour, when all have forsaken her, be Thou with her, O Jehovah! Be Thou with her, O Christ the merciful!'

The next morning they received a postcard from Christie with : 'Dearest, dearest love to both of you, my darling Papa and Mamma.' This made them exceedingly happy, as it had been so long since they had heard from her; and as they went about their work they spoke of it to their silent, shrinking neighbours.

No woman has ever been hanged in California, and the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. For three years Christie languished in San Quentin Prison, contriving as before to keep her secret from her parents. All Sant' Inez supported her, and not a whisper of her fate was allowed to reach the Rothmullers. They thought it a little hard that she should cease her visits, but she always had some excuse to offer, and kept brightly promising that next year' she should certainly

come. Utterly broken, she had contracted consumption in prison, and with Sam Ford's co-operation was already planning the last phase of the tragedy.

helpless in their grief, acquiesced

While the San Francisco papers
Banner' bore but this four-line

She died, and the old people, humbly in Sam's arrangements. were black with headlines, the announcement: DIED, in San Francisco, Christina Bender, widow of the late George H. Bender, and the beloved only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Rothmuller of this town, who passed away to her heavenly rest on March 14, 19—.'

The diminutive train brought back her body, which beneath the rosewood coffin still wore the prison dress. It lay in state in the adobe hut, buried in flowers from every garden in the valley, and was followed to the grave by almost the whole population. Never in the history of Sant' Inez had there been such a funeral. Not only were the townspeople there, the reporters from San Francisco, the local band, the firemen, the fraternal organisations. in their regalia, the ranchers from far and near; but the Chinese came too, the Mexicans, the forest rangers, the Greek constructiongangs from the new reservoir, the lumbermen and sheep-herders.

The Rothmullers accepted it all as a tribute to Christie. 'Everybody loved her,' they said simply. The angels knew she was one of them, and now they have called her back.'

Sam Ford, afterwards treating the newspaper men in the bar of the Good Fellows' Grotto,' put it differently.

'Boys, this ain't a town,' he said, with a huskiness not altogether due to his fourth cocktail, this is a little bit of heaven, and it would be a mighty low-down thing for any of you to give us

away.'

And they never did.