Jane cast a withering look after her retreating skirts, and picking the coin from the table, turned to the hired man.  “Run to the stable after that dandified young feller, Dick, and hand that back to him.  Ye kin say that Jane Mackinnon don’t run arrants fur money, nor play gooseberry to other folks fur fun.”

PART II

Mr. Joshua Rylands had, according to the vocabulary of his class, “found grace” at the age of sixteen, while still in the spiritual state of “original sin” and the political one of Missouri.  He had not indeed found it by persistent youthful seeking or spiritual insight, but somewhat violently and turbulently at a camp-meeting.  A village boy, naturally gentle and impressible, with an original character,—­limited, however, in education and experience,—­he had, after his first rustic debauch with some vulgar companions, fallen upon the camp-meeting in reckless audacity; and instead of being handed over to the district constable, was taken in and placed upon “the anxious bench,” “rastled with,” and exhorted by a strong revivalist preacher, “convicted of sin,” and—­converted!  It is doubtful if the shame of a public arrest and legal punishment would have impressed his youthful spirit as much as did this spiritual examination and trial, in which he himself became accuser.  Howbeit, its effect, though punitive, was also exemplary.  He at once cast off his evil companions; remaining faithful to his conversion, in spite of their later “backslidings.”  When, after the Western fashion, the time came for him to forsake his father’s farm and seek a new “quarter section” on some more remote frontier, he carried into that secluded, lonely, half-monkish celibacy of pioneer life—­which has been the foundation of so much strong Western character—­more than the usual religious feeling.  At once industrious and adventurous, he lived by “the Word,” as he called it, and Nature as he knew it,—­tempted by none of the vices or sentiments of civilization.  When he finally joined the Californian emigration, it was not as a gold-seeker, but as a discoverer of new agricultural fields; if the hardship was as great and the rewards fewer, he nevertheless knew that he retained his safer isolation and independence of spirit.  Vice and civilization were to him synonymous terms; it was the natural condition of the worldly and unregenerate.  Such was the man who chanced to meet “Nell Montgomery, the Pearl of the Variety Stage,” on the Sacramento boat, in one of his forced visits to civilization.  Without knowing her in her profession, her frank exposition of herself did not startle him; he recognized it, accepted it, and strove to convert it.  And as long as this daughter of Folly forsook her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no shame, and might be proclaimed from the housetop.  When his neighbors thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency in bringing his wife’s old friends to divert her:  she might in time convert them.  He had no more fear of her returning to their ways than he had of himself “backsliding.”  Narrow as was his creed, he had none of the harshness nor pessimism of the bigot.  With the keenest self-scrutiny, his credulity regarding others was touching.