“Jackson Filltree ran the express from White’s out to Summit, ’cross the North Fork of the Yuba.  One day he sez to me, ’Bill, that’s a mighty bad ford at the North Fork.’  I sez, ‘I believe you, Jackson.’  ’It’ll git me some day, Bill, sure,’ sez he.  I sez, ’Why don’t you take the lower ford?’ ‘I don’t know,’ sez he, ‘but I can’t.’  So ever after, when I met him, he sez, ‘That North Fork ain’t got me yet.’  One day I was in Sacramento, and up comes Filltree.  He sez, ’I’ve sold out the express business on account of the North Fork, but it’s bound to get me yet, Bill, sure’; and he laughs.  Two weeks after they finds his body below the ford, whar he tried to cross, comin’ down from the Summit way.  Folks said it was foolishness:  Tommy, I sez it was Fate!  The second day arter I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes outer the hotel above the stage-office.  Her husband, she said, was lying sick in Placerville; that’s what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate.  Three months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium tremems, and dies.  There’s folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it’s Fate.  A year after that I married her,—­Fate, Tommy, Fate!

“I lived with her jest three months,” he went on, after a long breath,—­“three months!  It ain’t much time for a happy man.  I’ve seen a good deal o’ hard life in my day, but there was days in that three months longer than any day in my life,—­days, Tommy, when it was a toss-up whether I should kill her or she me.  But thar, I’m done.  You are a young man, Tommy, and I ain’t goin’ to tell things thet, old as I am, three years ago I couldn’t have believed.”

When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington asked where his wife was now.

“Ask me no more, my boy,—­no more.  I’ve said my say.”  With a gesture as of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the window.

“You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world ’ud do me good.  Ef you can’t go with me, well and good.  But go I must.”

“Not before luncheon, I hope,” said a very sweet voice, as Blanche Masterman suddenly stood before them.  “Father would never forgive me if in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington’s friends to go in this way.  You will stay, won’t you?  Do!  And you will give me your arm now; and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will follow us into the dining-room and introduce you.”

“I have quite fallen in love with your friend,” said Miss Blanche, as they stood in the drawing-room looking at the figure of Bill, strolling, with his short pipe in his mouth, through the distant shrubbery.  “He asks very queer questions, though.  He wanted to know my mother’s maiden name.”

“He is an honest fellow,” said Islington, gravely.

“You are very much subdued.  You don’t thank me, I dare say, for keeping you and your friend here; but you couldn’t go, you know, until father returned.”