blame—­and that’s what gets them.  They’re all mixed up in it, deacons and Sunday-school teachers; and when old Johnson tried to be nasty the other evening and hoped you hadn’t suffered from your exertions that night, I told him you hadn’t quite recovered yet from the physical shock of having been run into by him and Mrs. Stubbs, but that, you being a lady, you didn’t tell just how you felt at the exhibition he and she made of themselves.  That shut him up.”

“But you shouldn’t have said that,” said Mrs. Wade with a frightened little smile.

“No matter,” returned Brooks cheerfully.  “I’ll take the blame of it with the others.  You see they’ll have to have a scapegoat—­and I’m just the man, for I got up the dance!  And as I’m going away, I suppose I shall bear off the sin with me into the wilderness.”

“You’re going away?” repeated Mrs. Wade in more genuine concern.

“Not for long,” returned Brooks laughingly.  “I came here to look up a mill site, and I’ve found it.  Meantime I think I’ve opened their eyes.”

“You have opened mine,” said the widow with timid frankness.

They were soft pretty eyes when opened, in spite of their heavy red lids, and Mr. Brooks thought that Santa Ana would be no worse if they remained open.  Possibly he looked it, for Mrs. Wade said hurriedly, “I mean—­that is—­I’ve been thinking that life needn’t always be as gloomy as we make it here.  And even here, you know, Mr. Brooks, we have six months’ sunshine—­though we always forget it in the rainy season.”

“That’s so,” said Brooks cheerfully.  “I once lost a heap of money through my own foolishness, and I’ve managed to forget it, and I even reckon to get it back again out of Santa Ana if my mill speculation holds good.  So good-by, Mrs. Wade—­but not for long.”  He shook her hand frankly and departed, leaving the widow conscious of a certain sympathetic confidence and a little grateful for—­she knew not what.

This feeling remained with her most of the afternoon, and even imparted a certain gayety to her spirits, to the extent of causing her to hum softly to herself; the air being oddly enough the Julien Waltz.  And when, later in the day, the shadows were closing in with the rain, word was brought to her that a stranger wished to see her in the sitting-room, she carried a less mournful mind to this function of her existence.  For Mrs. Wade was accustomed to give audience to traveling agents, tradesmen, working-hands and servants, as chatelaine of her ranch, and the occasion was not novel.  Yet on entering the room, which she used partly as an office, she found some difficulty in classifying the stranger, who at first glance reminded her of the tramping miner she had seen that night from her window.  He was rather incongruously dressed, some articles of his apparel being finer than others; he wore a diamond pin in a scarf folded over a rough “hickory” shirt; his light trousers were tucked in common mining boots that bore stains of travel and a suggestion that he had slept in his clothes.  What she could see of his unshaven face in that uncertain light expressed a kind of dogged concentration, overlaid by an assumption of ease.  He got up as she came in, and with a slight “How do, ma’am,” shut the door behind her and glanced furtively around the room.