AN ADVENTURE AT BROWNVILLE[1]

[1] This story was written in collaboration with Miss Ina Lillian Peterson, to whom is rightly due the credit for whatever merit it may have.

I taught a little country school near Brownville, which, as every one knows who has had the good luck to live there, is the capital of a considerable expanse of the finest scenery in California.  The town is somewhat frequented in summer by a class of persons whom it is the habit of the local journal to call “pleasure seekers,” but who by a juster classification would be known as “the sick and those in adversity.”  Brownville itself might rightly enough be described, indeed, as a summer place of last resort.  It is fairly well endowed with boarding-houses, at the least pernicious of which I performed twice a day (lunching at the schoolhouse) the humble rite of cementing the alliance between soul and body.  From this “hostelry” (as the local journal preferred to call it when it did not call it a “caravanserai”) to the schoolhouse the distance by the wagon road was about a mile and a half; but there was a trail, very little used, which led over an intervening range of low, heavily wooded hills, considerably shortening the distance.  By this trail I was returning one evening later than usual.  It was the last day of the term and I had been detained at the schoolhouse until almost dark, preparing an account of my stewardship for the trustees—­two of whom, I proudly reflected, would be able to read it, and the third (an instance of the dominion of mind over matter) would be overruled in his customary antagonism to the schoolmaster of his own creation.

I had gone not more than a quarter of the way when, finding an interest in the antics of a family of lizards which dwelt thereabout and seemed full of reptilian joy for their immunity from the ills incident to life at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to observe them.  As I leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with a tender but ghostly light.

I heard the sound of voices—­a woman’s, angry, impetuous, rising against deep masculine tones, rich and musical.  I strained my eyes, peering through the dusky shadows of the wood, hoping to get a view of the intruders on my solitude, but could see no one.  For some yards in each direction I had an uninterrupted view of the trail, and knowing of no other within a half mile thought the persons heard must be approaching from the wood at one side.  There was no sound but that of the voices, which were now so distinct that I could catch the words.  That of the man gave me an impression of anger, abundantly confirmed by the matter spoken.

“I will have no threats; you are powerless, as you very well know.  Let things remain as they are or, by God! you shall both suffer for it.”