out his mother, sharply. "Father, why don't you correct the boy? Such a night as this, too, when – "
"What's that?" interrupted the oldest son, springing from his seat, and showing a straight, manly form and clear, deep eyes, as he stood by the door in a listening attitude.
"Coyotes, brother Frank; the ghosts don't come round this early, do they?" laughed the younger.
"Hush, Johnny! It's some one crying for help – a woman's voice!"
"Tut, tut! where would a woman come from this time o' night, and not a house within miles of us?"
"A woman's voice, I'll stake my head," insisted Frank, after a moment's silence in the room.
The mother had laid down her glasses. "Wonder if the boy thinks Lolita is coming through the storm to watch the old year out with him?" She laughed as at something that gave her much pleasure, though the rest did not share her merriment.
They were all three listening at door and window now, and when Frank threw the one nearest him quickly open, there came a sound through the din and fury of the rain-storm that was neither the howling of the wind nor the yelp of the coyote.
"Now what do you say?" asked Frank; and he had already passed through an inner apartment, and in a moment stood on the porch again, swinging a lantern and peering out into the dark and rain, listening for that cry of distress. It came in a moment – nearer than they had expected it.
"Help! help! oh, please come and help!"
"The d – l!" was old man Sutton's exclamation; not that he really thought the slender little figure perched on the back of the tall horse was the personage mentioned – it was only a habit he had of apostrophizing.
The horse had stopped short and was breathing hard, and the prayer for help was frantically repeated by the rider. "Come quick, and help the poor fellow; I've been gone so long from him – oh! do come!"
"What poor fellow – and where is he?" asked the old man, in bewilderment.
"The stage-driver – and he's lying near the old Mission, with his leg broken. The horses shied in the storm and overturned the stage, and I was the only passenger, and I crept out of it, and the driver couldn't move any more, and told me to unhitch the horses and come this way for help, and – oh! do come now!" She ended her harangue, delivered with flying breath and little attention to rhetoric or inter-punctuation.
"And you came those nine miles all alone, gal?" asked the old man.
"Oh, I think I must have come a hundred miles," she replied, with a wild look at the faces on the porch and in the open doorway; "and it is so cold!" She drew the dripping garments closer about her, while father and son consulted together, with their eyes only, for a brief moment. Then the old man said she must be taken in, and they must get the wagon ready, and waken Pedro and Martin.
Without a word Frank gave a lantern to Johnny, lifted the girl from the horse and carried her into the room, brushing the drenched hair back from her face, when he sat her down, as he would have done a child's. But she pleaded excitedly, "Indeed I cannot stay – let me go back, and you can follow."
"So you shall go back, my gal," said Mr. Sutton, "as soon as the wagon is ready. See how she's shivering, mother; get her some hot tea, and give her your fur sack – for she'll go back with us or die."
"My fur sack?" repeated the old lady, incredulously; "my best sack – out in this rain!"
"Best sack be – ," he shouted, angrily; "I'll throw it in the fire in a minute!" And the best sack quickly made its appearance, in spite of the threat of speedy cremation.
The tea was brought by Johnny, hastily drank, and then the girl repeated her wish to move on. Frank's own cloak was thrown over "the best fur sack" – not, I fear, so much from a desire to save this garment as from the wish to keep the shrinking form in it from shivering so painfully.
It was New-Year's day – though the light had not yet dawned before the sufferer was comfortably lodged at the Yedral Ranch, and Hetty, as well as the Sutton family, slept later into the morning than usual. The sun had risen as serenely cloudless as though no storm had passed through the land but yesternight; and Father Sutton, thinking he was the first one up, was surprised to encounter Hetty with Johnny, her new-found cavalier. He hailed her in his unceremonious fashion: "I'm glad to see you up bright and early, gal – make a good farmer's wife some day. Did you come down this way to live on a ranch?"
"No, sir; I came to teach school. Your name is among those of the gentlemen who engaged me."
"The – ! Are you the new school-marm? Then you're Miss – "
"Hetty Dunlap is my name."
He held out both hands. "A happy New-Year to ye, Hetty Dunlap – and happy it'll be for all of us, I'm thinking; for a gal that's got so much pluck as you is sure to know something about teachin' school. Here, Johnny, how d'ye like your teacher?"
Now, Johnny had drawn back with some slight manifestation of disfavor when Hetty's true character came to light. But she laid her hand on his shoulder in her shy yet frank manner, and said quickly:
"I had already selected Johnny as a sort of assistant disciplinarian. I am so little that I shall want some one who is tall and strong to give me countenance;" which at once restored the harmony between them. They went in to breakfast together, during which meal it was decided by Father Sutton that Hetty was to live in his family, though "the Price's" was the place where, until now, the teachers had made their home, being nearest to the school.
"But then," said the old man, "if the Rancho Yedral can't afford a mustang for such a brave little rider every day of the year, then I'll give it up;" and he slapped his hat on and left the house.
"Yes," Frank commented rather timidly, "you are brave – a perfect heroine. And yet you are so very small." She was standing in just the spot where he had brushed the hair out of her face last night, and perhaps his words were an apology.
"True," she assented, "I am small; not much taller than my sister's oldest girl, and she is only twelve."
"You have a sister?"
"Yes, in the city; and she has six children." Her voice was raised a little, her nut-brown eyes looked into his with an unconscious appeal for sympathy, and her delicate nostrils quivered as in terror – which the bare recollection of the little heathens seemed to inspire her with.
"And did you live at her house? – have you neither father nor mother living?"
"Neither. How happy you must be – you have so kind a father and so good a mother – "
The "good mother" came in just then, shaking her best sack vigorously, and lamenting, in pointed words, the "ruination" of this expensive fur robe – calling a painful blush to Hetty's cheek as well as Frank's. The young man tried vainly to make it appear a pleasant joke. "Indeed, mother, you ought to look upon that piece of fur as a handsome New-Year's gift – you have my promise of a new fur sack as soon as I go to the city. And isn't my word good for a fur sack?" he asked, laughingly.
"Yes," said the good mother. "I know your extravagance well enough; but, to my notion, you can afford such things better after you've married Lolita, than before."
Frank bit his lips angrily, and turned away – but not before Hetty had seen the hot red that flushed his cheek.
Toward noon there was loud rejoicing
