and found the clothes
and took them away." He stopped and stared at her gloomily.

But all this was unintelligible to the girl. "Dad would have got
the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so what's the
difference?"

"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his place."

She did not understand, but turned her head to her master. "Then
you'll go back with me and tell him _all_?" she said obediently.

"Yes," he said.

She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together. She
foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not
love as she did. _She_ would not have taken these risks against their
happiness.

But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from the wood
they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to
hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge
Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.

Salomy Jane turned to her lover.

* * * * *

And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to
lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal,
fastidious parent. But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this
romance is based. A month later a handbill was posted on one of the
sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold by auction
to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay,
Esq., and it was sold accordingly. Still later--by ten years--the
chronicler of these pages visited a certain "stock" or "breeding
farm," in the "Blue Grass Country," famous for the popular racers
it has produced. He was told that the owner was the "best judge of
horse-flesh in the country." "Small wonder," added his informant, "for
they say as a young man out in California he was a horse-thief, and
only saved himself by eloping with some rich farmer's daughter. But
he's a straight-out and respectable man now, whose word about horses
can't be bought; and as for his wife, _she_'s a beauty! To see her at
the 'Springs,' rigged out in the latest fashion, you'd never think
she had ever lived out of New York or wasn't the wife of one of its
millionaires."

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

U.S.A

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALOMY JANE ***

***** This file should be named 15