“I suppose I’ll have time for a nap yet,” she said, as a gentle hint to her embarrassed parent.  He nodded and turned towards the door.

“If I were you,” she continued, repressing a yawn, “I’d manage to be seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give the letter to him until the last thing.  Good-by.”

The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking, quietly let himselt out by the front door.

When he drove into the highroad again, however, an overlooked possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable intentions regarding Low.  The hotel was at the farther end of the settlement toward the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly approaching from the direction of the Excelsior turnpike.  Wynn made no doubt it was the sheriff and Brace.  To avoid recognition at that moment, he whipped up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn into the first cross-road.  But the coming travelers had the fleetest horse; and finding it impossible to distance them, he drove close to the ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was abreast of him, and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with the result already chronicled.  When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and universal benevolence, wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he had already passed.  To pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord’s door, and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dressed and half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part of his amiable plans that morning.

“Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and about as much again to prop open your eyes,” he said, dragging Carter before the bar, “and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up and stirring after a hard-working Christian’s rest.  How goes the honest publican’s trade, and who have we here?”

“Thar’s Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick Curson over from Yolo,” said Carter, “and that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the Carquinez Woods.  I reckon he’s jist up—­I noticed a light under his door as I passed.”

“He’s my man for a friendly chat before breakfast,” said Wynn.  “You needn’t come up.  I’ll find the way.  I don’t want a light; I reckon my eyes ain’t as bright nor as young as his, but they’ll see almost as far in the dark—­he-he!” And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode along the passage, and with no other introduction than a playful and preliminary “Boo!” burst into one of the rooms.  Low, who by the light of a single candle was bending over the plates of a large quarto, merely raised his eyes and looked at the intruder.  The young man’s natural imperturbability, always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that morning by contrast with his own over-acted animation.