Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie’s condescension; he at once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours and a half of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion with her.  If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he had premeditated a few hours before.  He was therefore obliged to take a middle course of slightly egotistical narration of his own personal adventures, with which he beguiled the young girl’s ear.  This he only departed from once, to describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had seen that day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possible acceptance of it for a “buggy robe;” and once to comment upon a ring which she had inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.

“It’s only an old family keepsake,” she added, with easy mendacity; and affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace’s curiosity a not unnatural excuse for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and resume her glove.

A week passed—­a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those dry Sierra table-lands.  The long days were filled with impalpable dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests.  The lagging coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior Hotel.  As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces.  They were the usual type of travelers:  a single professional man in dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or muleteer.  This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in the bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel, as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled with a lazy, dragging step—­half impeded by the enormous leather leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class—­down the main street.  The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street corners.  Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind.  The few female figures about at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his marked attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters of Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church.  Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered he managed to slip in unperceived behind them.