Thus appealed to, Brice could only comply.  Perhaps he was a little hurt at the girl’s evident desire to avoid a gentler parting.  Securing his prized envelope within his breast, he began to ascend the tree.  Its inclination, and the aid offered by the broken stumps of branches, made this comparatively easy, and in a few moments he reached its top, and stood upon a little ledge in the wall.  A swift glance around him revealed the whole waterway or fissure slanting upward along the mountain face.  Then he turned quickly to look down the dizzy height.  At first he could distinguish nothing but the top of the buckeyes and their white clustering blossoms.  Then something fluttered,—­the torn white handkerchief of his that she had kept.  And then he caught a single glimpse of the flower-plumed hat receding rapidly among the trees, and Flora Dimwood was gone.

III

In twenty-four hours Edward Brice was in San Francisco.  But although successful and the bearer of the treasure, it is doubtful if he approached this end of his journey with the temerity he had shown on entering the robbers’ valley.  A consciousness that the methods he had employed might excite the ridicule, if not the censure, of his principals, or that he might have compromised them in his meeting with Snapshot Harry, considerably modified his youthful exultation.  It is possible that Flora’s reproach, which still rankled in his mind, may have quickened his sensitiveness on that point.  However, he had resolved to tell the whole truth, except his episode with Flora, and to place the conduct of Snapshot Harry and the Tarboxes in as favorable a light as possible.  But first he had recourse to the manager, a man of shrewd worldly experience, who had recommended him to his place.  When he had finished and handed him the treasured envelope, the man looked at him with a critical and yet not unkindly expression.  “Perhaps it’s just as well, Brice, that you did come to me at first, and did not make your report to the president and directors.”

“I suppose,” said Brice diffidently, “that they wouldn’t have liked my communicating with the highwayman without their knowledge?”

“More than that—­they wouldn’t have believed your story.”

“Not believe it?” cried Brice, flushing quickly.  “Do you think”—­

The manager checked him with a laugh.  “Hold on!  I believe every word of it, and why?  Because you’ve added nothing to it to make yourself the regular hero.  Why, with your opportunity, and no one able to contradict you, you might have told me you had a hand-to-hand fight with the thief, and had to kill him to recover the money, and even brought your handkerchief and hat back with the bullet holes to prove it.”  Brice winked as he thought of the fair possessor of those articles.  “But as a story for general circulation, it won’t do.  Have you told it to any one else?  Does any one know what happened but yourself?”