The long side windows let in the glare, a fierce illumination showing a vista of demolishment. Through broken bits of mortar the parquet reflected it; it struck rich gleams from the fragments of a mirror, ran up the walls, playing on the gilt of picture frames. She moved forward, trying to think they might be there, that someone might flit ghost-like toward her through that eerie barring of shadow and ruddy light. But the place was a dry, dead shell; no pulse of life seemed ever to have beaten within those ravaged walls. She summoned her energies to call, send out her voice in a cry for them, then stood—the quavering sound unuttered—hearing a step outside.

It was a quick, firm step, heavier than a woman's, and was coming down the stairs. She stood suddenly stricken to a waiting tension, dark against a long sweep of curtain, possessed by an immense expectancy, a gathering and condensing of all feeling into a wild hope. The steps gained the hall and came toward the doorway. Her hands, clasped, went out toward them, like hands extended in prayer, her eyes riveted on the opening. Through it—for a moment pausing on the sill to sweep the room's length—came Mark Burrage.

He did not see her, made a step forward and then heard her whisper, no word, only a formless breath, the shadow of a sound.

"Lorry!" he cried as he had cried the night before, and stood staring this way and that, feeling her presence, knowing her near.

Then he saw her, coming out of the darkness with her outstretched hands, not clasped now, but extended, the arms spread wide to him as he had dreamed of some day seeing them.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN

A few minutes after the Vallejo Hotel had sunk into ruin, a man came running up the street. Even among those shaken from a normal demeanor by an abnormal event, he was noticeable; for he was wild, a creature dominated by a frenzied fear. As he ran he cried out for news of the hotel, and shouted answers smote against him like blows: "Down—gone down! Collapsed. Everybody in the lower floors dead!" And he rushed on, burst his way through groups, shot past others flying to the scene, flung obstructing figures from his path.

"Mad," someone cried, thrown to the wall by a sweep of his arm, "mad and running amuck."

They would have held him, a desperate thing, clawing and tearing his way through the crowd, but that suddenly, with a strangled cry, he came to a stop. Over the shoulders of a group of men he saw a girl's head, and his shout of "Pancha!" made them fall back. He gathered her in his arms, strained her against him, in the emotion of that supreme moment lifting his face to the sky. It was a face that those who saw it never forgot.

The men dispersed, were absorbed into the heaving tumult, running, squeezing, jamming here, thinning there, falling back before desperate searchers calling out names that would never be answered, thronging in the wake of women shrieking for their children. Police came battling their way through, forcing the people back. Swept against a fence Garland could at first only hold her, mutter over her, want to know that she was unhurt. She gave him broken answers; she had run up instead of down—that was how she was there. The horror of it came back in a sickening realization, and she shook, clinging to him, only his arm keeping her from falling. A man had thrown his coat about her, and Garland pulled it over her, then, looking down, saw her feet, bare and scratched in pointed, high-heeled slippers. The sight of them, incongruous reminders of the intimate aspects of life, brought him down to the moment and her place in it.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get out of this. You want to get something on. Can you walk? Not far, only a few blocks."

She could do anything, she said, now that she knew he was safe, and, her fingers in the bend of his arm, he pulled her after him through the press. Gaining clearer spaces, they ran, side by side, their faces curiously alike, stamped by the same exalted expression as they fronted the rising sun.

She heard him say something about taking her away, having a horse and cart. She made no answer; with his presence all sensations but thankfulness seemed to have died in her. And then, upon her temporary peace, came thronging strange and dreadful impressions, waking her up, telling her the world had claims beyond the circle of her own consciousness. She caught them as she ran—a shifting series of sinister pictures: a house down in a tumbled heap of brick and stone, a sick woman on a couch on the sidewalk, a family dragging furniture through a blocked doorway, pillars, window ledges, cornices scattered along the road. Over all, delicately pervasive, adding a last ominous suggestion, was a faint, acrid odor of burning wood.

"Fire!" she said. "I can smell it."

"Oh, there'll be fires. That's bound to come."

"Where are we going?" she panted.

"Right round here—the place where I was stayin'. There's a widder woman keeps it, Mrs. Meeker. She's got a horse and cart that'll get you out of this. I guess all the car lines is bust, and I guess we'll have to move out quick. Look!"

He pointed over the roofs to where glassy films of smoke rose against the morning sky.

"Everyone of 'em's a fire and the wind's fresh. I hope to God this shake up ain't done any harm to the mains."

They had reached Mrs. Meeker's gate. He swung it open and she followed him across the garden to where a worn, grassy path, once a carriage drive, led past the house to the back yard. Here stood Mrs. Meeker, a hatchet in her hand, trying to pry open the stable door.

"Oh, Lord!" she cried, turning at his step, "I'm glad you've come back. Every other soul in the place has run off, and I can't get the stable door open."

Her glance here caught Pancha, her nightgown showing below the man's overcoat.

"Who's she?" she asked, a gleam of curiosity breaking through the larger urgencies.

"My daughter. She lives right round here. I run for her as soon as I felt the first quake. You got to take her along in the cart, and will you give her some clothes?"

"Sure," said Mrs. Meeker, and the flicker of curiosity extinguished, she returned to the jammed door that shut her out from the means of flight. "Upstairs in my room. Anything you want." Then to Garland, who had moved to her assistance, "I'm goin' to get out of here—go uptown to my cousin's. But I wouldn't leave Prince, not if the whole city was down in the dust."

Prince was Mrs. Meeker's horse, which, hearing its name, whinnied plaintively from the stable. Pancha disappeared into the house, and the man and woman attacked the door with the hatchet and a poker. As they worked she panted out disjointed bits of information:

"There's a man just come in here tellin' me there's fires, a lot of 'em, all started together. And he says there's houses down over on Minna and Tehama streets and people under them. Did you know the back wall's out of that new hotel? Fell clear across the court. I saw it go from my room—just a smash and a cloud of dust."

"Umph," grunted the man. "Anybody hurt?"

"I don't think so, but I don't know. I went out in front first off and saw the people pourin' out of it into the street—a whole gang in their nightgowns."

A soldier appeared walking smartly up the carriage drive, sweeping the yard with a glance of sharp command.

"Say. What are you fooling round that stable for?"

Mrs. Meeker, poker in hand, was on the defensive.

"I'm gettin' a horse out—my horse."

"Well, you want to be quick about it. You got to clear out of here. Anybody in the house?"

"No. What are you puttin' us out for?"

"Fire. You don't want to lose any time. We've orders to get the people on the move. I just been in that hotel next door and rooted out the last of 'em—running round packing their duds as if they'd hours to waste. Had to threaten some of 'em with the bayonet. Get busy now and get out."

He turned and walked off, meeting Pancha as she came from the house. A skirt and blouse of Mrs. Meeker's hung loose on her lithe thinness, their amplitude confined about her middle by a black crochet shawl which she had crossed over her chest and tied in the back.

"A lot of that big building's down," she cried, as she ran up. "I could see it from the window, all scattered across the open space behind it."

Engrossed in their task neither answered her, and she moved round the corner of the stable to better see the debris of the fallen wall. Standing thus, a voice dropped on her from a window in the house that rose beyond Mrs. Meeker's back fence.

"Do you know if all the people are out of that hotel?"

She looked up; standing in a third story window was a young man in his shirt sleeves. He appeared to have been occupied in tying his cravat, his hands still holding the ends of it. His face was keen and fresh, and was one of the first faces she had seen that morning that had retained its color and a look of lively intelligence.

"I don't know," she answered. "I've only just got here. Why?"

"Because it looks to me as if there was someone in one of the rooms—someone on the floor."

The stable door gave with a wrench and swung open. Garland jerked it wide and stepped back to where he could command the man in the window.

"What's that about someone in the hotel?" he said.

The young man leaned over the sill and completed the tying of his cravat.

"I can see from here right into one of those rooms, and I'm pretty sure there's a person lying on the floor—dead maybe. The electric light fixture's down and may have got them."

Garland turned to Mrs. Meeker:

"You get out Prince and put him in the cart." Then to the man in the window: "I'll go in and see. A soldier's just been here who says they've cleaned the place out. There's maybe somebody hurt that they ain't seen."

"Hold on a minute and I'll go with you," called the other. "I'm a doctor and I might come in handy. I'll be there in a jiff."

He vanished from the window, and before Prince was backed into the shafts, walked up the carriage drive, neatly clad, cool and alert, his doctor's bag in his hand.

"I was just looking at the place as I dressed. Queer sight—looks like a doll's house. Bedding flung back over the footboards, the way they'd thrown it when they jumped. Clothes neatly folded over the chairs. And then in that third-story room I saw something long and solid-looking on the floor. Seems to be tangled up in the coverlets. The electric light thing's sprinkled all over it. That's what makes me pretty sure—hit 'em as they made a break. Come on."

He and Garland made off as Pancha and Mrs. Meeker set to work on the harnessing of Prince.

The soldiers had done their work. The hotel was empty—a congeries of rooms left in wild disorder, opened trunks in the passages, clothes tossed and trampled on the floors. As the men ran up the stairs, its walls gave back the sound of their feet like a place long deserted and abandoned to decay. The recurring shocks that shook its dislocated frame sent plaster down, and called forth creaking protests from the wrenched girders. The rear was flooded with light, streaming in where the wall had been, and through open doors they saw the houses opposite filling in the background like the drop scene at a theater.

The third floor had suffered more than those below, and they made their way down a hall where mortar lay heaped over the wreckage of glass, pictures and chairs. The bedroom that was their goal was tragic in its signs of intimate habitation strewn and dust-covered, as if years had passed since they had been set forth by an arranging feminine hand. The place looked as untenanted as a tomb. Anyone glancing over its blurred ruin, no voice responding to a summons, might have missed the figure that lay concealed by the bed and partly enwrapped in its coverings.

The doctor, kneeling beside it, pushed them off and swept away the litter of glass and metal that had evidently fallen from the ceiling and struck the woman down. She was lying on her face, one hand still gripping the clothes, a pink wrapper twisted about her, her blonde hair stained with the ooze of blood from a wound in her head. He felt of her pulse and heart and twitching up her eyelids looked into her set and lifeless eyes.

"Is she dead?" Garland asked.

"No," He snapped his bag open with businesslike briskness. "Concussion. Got a glancing blow from the light fixture. Seems as if she'd been trying to wrap herself up in the bedclothes and got in the worst place she could—just under it."

"Can you do anything for her?"

"Not much. Rest and quiet is what she ought to have, and I don't see how she's going to get it the way things are now."

"We got a cart. We can take her along with us."

"Good work. I'll fix her up as well as I can and turn her over to you." He had taken scissors from his bag and with deft speed began to cut away the tangled hair from the torn flesh. "I'll put in a stitch or two and bind her up. Looks like a person of means." He gave a side glance at her hand, white and beringed. "You might get off the mattress while I'm doing this. We can put her on it and carry her down. She's a big woman; must be five feet nine or ten."

Garland dragged the mattress to the floor, while the doctor rose and made a dive for the bathroom. He emerged from it a moment later, his brow corrugated.

"No water!" he said, as he stepped over the strewn floor to his patient. "That's a cheerful complication."

He bent over her, engrossed in his task, every now and then, as the building quivered to the earth throes, stopping to mutter in irritated impatience. Garland went to the window and called down to Pancha and Mrs. Meeker that they'd found a woman, alive but unconscious, and space must be left for her in the cart. He stood for a moment watching them as they pulled out the up-piled household goods with which Mrs. Meeker had been filling it. Then the doctor, snapping his bag shut and jumping to his feet, called him back:

"That's done. It's all I can do for her now. Come on—lend a hand. Take her shoulders; she's a good solid weight."

Her head was covered with bandages close and tight as a nun's coif. They framed a face hardly less white and set in a stony insensibility.

"Lord, she looks like a dead one," Garland said, as he lowered the wounded head on the mattress.

"She's not that, but she may be unless she gets somewhere out of this. Easy now; these quakes keep getting in the way."

They carried her down the stairs and out into the street. Here the crowd, already moving before the fire, was thick, a dense mass, plowing forward through an atmosphere heat-dried and cinder-choked. The voices of police and soldiers rose above the multiple sounds of that tide of egress urging it on. A way was made for the men with their grim load, eyes touching it sympathetically, now and then a comment: "Dead is she, poor thing?" But mostly they were too bewildered or too swamped in their own tragedy to notice any other.

Prince and the cart were ready. From her discarded belongings Mrs. Meeker had salvaged three treasures, which she had stowed against the dashboard, a solio portrait of her late husband, a canary in a gilt cage, and a plated silver teapot. The body of the cart was clear, and the men placed the mattress there. The spread that covered the woman becoming disarranged, Pancha smoothed it into neatness, pausing to look with closer scrutiny into the marble face. It was so unlike the face she had seen before, rosy and smiling beneath the shade of modish hats, that no glimmer of recognition came to her. Chrystie was to her, as she was to the others, an unknown woman.

Mrs. Meeker, even in this vital moment, knew again a stir of curiosity.

"Who is she?" she said to the men. "Ain't you found anything up there to tell us where she belongs?"

The doctor's voice crackled like pistol shots:

"Good God, woman, we've not got time to find out who people are. Take her along—get a move on. It's getting d——d hot here."

It was; the heat of the growing conflagration was scorching on their faces, the cinders falling like rain.

"Get up there, Mrs. Meeker," Garland commanded; "on the front seat. You drive and Pancha and I'll walk alongside."

The woman climbed up. The doctor, turning to go, gave his last orders:

"Try and get her out of this—uptown—where there's air and room. Keep her as quiet as you can. You'll run up against doctors who'll help. Sorry I can't go along with you, but there'll be work for my kind all over the city today, and I got a girl across toward North Beach that I want to see after."

He was off down the carriage drive almost colliding with a soldier, who came up on the run, a bayoneted musket in his hand, his face a blackened mask, streaming with sweat. At the sight of the cart he broke into an angry roar:

"What are you standing round for? Do you want to be burnt? Get out. Don't you know the fire's coming? Get out."

They moved out and joined the vast procession of a city in exodus.

For months afterward Pancha dreamed of that day—woke at night to a sense of toiling, onward effort, a struggling slow progress, accomplished amid a sea of faces all turned one way. The dream vision was not more prodigiously improbable than the waking fact—life, comfortable and secure, suddenly stripped of its garnishings, cut down to a single obsessing issue, narrowed to the point where the mind held but one desire—to be safe.

Before the advancing wall of flame the Mission was pouring out, retreating like an army in defeat. Every avenue was congested with the moving multitude, small streets emptying into larger ones, houses ejecting their inmates. At each corner the tide was swollen by new streams, rolling into the wider current, swaying to adjustment, then pressing on. Looking forward Pancha could see the ranks dark to the limit of her vision; looking back, the faces, smoke-blackened, sweat-streaked, marked with fierce tension, with fear, with dogged endurance, with cool courage, with blank incomprehension. The hot breath of the fire swept about them, the sound of its triumphant march was in their ears, a backward glance showed its first high flame crests. Soldiers drove them on, shouted at them, thrust stupefied figures in amongst them, pushed others, dazedly cowering in their homes, out through doors and ground-floor windows. At intervals the earth stirred and heaved, and then with a simultaneous cry, rising in one long wail of terror, they jammed together in the middle of the street, so close-packed a man could have walked on their heads.

To make way through them Garland was forced to lead the horse. Women clung to the shafts and trailed at the tailboard; the cart stopped by an influx of traffic, men stood on the hubs of the wheels staring back at the swelling smoke clouds. Mutual experiences flashed back and forth, someone's death dully recounted, a miraculous escape, tales of falling chimneys and desperate chances boldly taken. Some were bent under heavy loads, which they cast down despairingly by the way; some carried nothing. Those who had had time and clearness of head had packed baby carriages edge full of their dearest treasures; others pulled clothes baskets after them into which anything their hand had lighted on had been hurled pell-mell. There were sick dragged on sofas, wounded upheld by the arms of good Samaritans, old people in barrows, in children's carts, sometimes carried in a "chair" made by the linked hands of two men.

And everywhere trunks, their monotonous scraping rising above the shuffle of the myriad feet. Men pulled them by ropes taut about their chests, by the handles, pushed them from behind. Then as the day progressed and the smoke wall threw out long wings to the right and left, they began to leave them. The sidewalk was littered with them, they stood square in the path, tilted over into the gutter, end up against the fence. Other possessions were dropped beside them, pictures, sewing machines, furs, china ornaments, pieces of furniture, clocks, even the packed baby carriages and the clothes baskets. Only two things the houseless thousands refused to leave—their children and their pets. It seemed to Pancha there was not a family that did not lead a dog, or carry a cat, or a bird in a cage.

By midday the cart had made an uptown plaza, and there come to a halt for rest. The grass was covered thick with people, stretched beside their shorn belongings, many asleep as they had dropped. A few of them had brought food; others, with money, went out to buy what they could at the nearby shops, already depleted of their stores. All but the children were very still, looking at the flames that licked along the sky line. They had heard now the story of the broken mains, and somberly, without lament or rebellion, recognized the full extent of the calamity.

A young girl, standing on a wall, a line of pails beside her, offered cupfuls of water to those who drooped or fainted. Thirsty hoards besieged her, and Pancha, edging in among them, made her demand, not for herself, but for a sick woman. The girl dipped a small cut-glass pitcher in one of the pails and handed it to her.

"That's a double supply," she said. "But you look as if you needed some for yourself. We've a little water running in our house, and I'm going to stand here and dole it out till the fire comes. They say that'll be in a few hours, so don't bring back the pitcher. There's only my mother and myself, and we can't carry anything away."

Pancha squeezed out with her treasure, and going to the cart climbed into the front, sliding over the seat to a space at the head of the mattress. She bent over the still figure, looking into the face. Its youth and comeliness smote her, seemed to knock at her heart and soften something there that had been hard. An uprush of intense feeling, pity for this blighted creature, this maimed and helpless thing, rescued by chance from a horrible death, rose and flooded her. She moistened the temples and dry lips, lifted the bound head to her lap, striving for some expression of her desire to heal, to care for, to restore to life the broken sister that fate had cast into her hands. Mrs. Meeker came and peered over the side of the cart, shaking her head dubiously.

"Looks like to me she'd never open her eyes again."

Pancha was pierced with an angry resentment.

"Don't say that. She's going to get well. I'm going to make her."

"I hope you can," said the elder woman. "Poor thing, what a time she must have had! Your pa says it seemed as if there was no one there with her. I'd like to know who she is."

"She's somebody rich. Look at her hands."

She touched, with a caressing lightness, Chrystie's hand, milk-white, satin-fine, a diamond and sapphire ring on one finger.

Mrs. Meeker nodded.

"Oh, yes, she's no poor girl. Anyone can see that. You'd get it from the wrapper, let alone the rings. I've been wondering if maybe she wasn't straight."

"She is. I know it."

"How could you know that?"

"By her face."

Mrs. Meeker considered it, and murmured:

"I guess you're right. It has got an innocent look. It'll be up to you, whether she lives or dies, to find out who she is and if she's got any relations."

"Oh, that'll be all right," said Pancha confidently, "I'm going to take care of her and cure her, and when she's good and ready she'll tell me."

They moved on for quieter surroundings and to find a doctor. This was a hopeless quest. Every house that bore a sign was tried, and at each one the answer was the same: the doctor was out; went right after the quake to be back no one knew when. Some were at the Mechanics' Pavilion, where the injured had been gathered, and which had to be vacated later in the day; others at work in the hospitals being cleared before the fire's advance.

Late in the afternoon Mrs. Meeker left them to go to her cousin's, who had a cottage up beyond Van Ness Avenue. Prince and the cart she gave over to them; they'd need it to get the woman away out of all this noise and excitement. Tears were in her eyes as she bade farewell to the old horse, giving Garland an address that would find her later—"unless it goes with the rest of the town"—she added resignedly. In the first shadowing of twilight, illumined with the fire's high glow, they watched her trudge off, the bird cage in one hand, the portrait in the other, the teapot tucked under her arm.

It was night when they came to a final halt—a night horribly bright, the sky a blazing splendor defying the darkness. The place was an open space on the first rise of the Mission Hills. There were houses about, here and there ascending the slope in an abortive attempt at a street which, halfway up, abandoned the effort and lapsed into a sprinkling of one-story cottages. Above them, on the naked hillside, the first wave of refugees had broken and scattered. Under the fiery radiance they sat, dumb with fatigue, some sleeping curled up among their bundles, some clustered about little cores of fire over which they cooked food brought out to them from the houses. A large tree stretched its limbs over a plateau in the hill's flank and here the cart was brought to a stop. Prince, loosed from the shafts, cropped a supper from the grass, and the unknown woman lay on her mattress under the red-laced shade.

A girl from a cottage down the slope brought them coffee, bread and fruit, and sitting side by side they ate, looking out over the sea of roofs to where the ragged flame tongues leaped and dropped, and the smoke mountains rolled sullenly over the faint, obscured stars. They spoke little, aware for the first time of a great exhaustion, hearing strangely the sounds of a life that went on as if unchanged and uninterrupted—the clinking of china, the fitful cries of children sinking to sleep, the barking of dogs, a voice crooning a song, and laughter, low-voiced and sweet.

Presently they drew closer together and began to talk; at first of immediate interests—food to be procured, the injured woman, how to care for her, find her shelter, discover who she was. Then of themselves—how the quake had come to each, that mad, upward rush of Pancha's, Garland's race along the street. That done, she suddenly dropped down and lying with her head against his knee, her face turned from the firelight, she told him how Boye Mayer had come to her in the dawn, and how he lay buried in the ruins of the Vallejo Hotel.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE SEARCH

There was no interchange of vows, no whispered assurances and shy confessions, between Lorry and Mark. After that sheltering enfoldment in his arms, she drew back, her hands on his shoulders, looking into his face with eyes that showed no consciousness of a lover's first kiss. For a space their glances held, deep-buried each in each, saying what their lips had no words for, pledging them one to the other, making the pact that only death should break. Then her hands slid down and, one caught in his, they moved across the room.

During the first moments exaltation lifted her above her troubles. His longed-for presence, the feel of his hand round hers, made her forget the rest, gave her a temporary respite. Only half heeding, she heard him tell how her summons had come, how, with two other men who had families in the city, he had chartered an engine, made part of the journey in that, then in a motor, given them by a farmer, reached Oakland, and there hired a tug which had landed him an hour before at the Italian's wharf.

For himself he had found her, after a day of agonized apprehension, at a time when his hopes were dwindling. To know her safe, to feel her hand inside his own, was enough. All she told him then was that she had come back to the house for Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, and found they were gone. But they might have left a letter, some written message to tell her where they were. With those words her anxieties came to life again, her step lost its lingering slowness, her face its rapt tranquillity.

Dropping his hand, she started on a search, through slanting doorways, by choked passages, across the illumined spaciousness of the wide, still rooms. Nothing was there, and she turned to the stairs, running up, he at her heels, two shadows flitting through the red-shot gloom. The upper floor, more damaged than the lower, was swept with the sinister luster, shooting in above the trees, revealing perspectives of ruin. Every window was broken, and the heat and the smell of burning poured in, the drift of cinders black along the floors.

She darted ahead into her own room, going to the bureau, sending a lightning look over it. Standing in the doorway he saw her start, wheel about to glance at the bed, the chair. A pile of dresses lay in a corner, the closet door was open.

"Someone's been here," she said. "The diamond aigrette, the jewel box—all my things are gone. Even the dress I wore last night—it was on the bed. They've all been taken."

He came in and took her arm, drawing her away.

"Everything of value's gone," he said quietly. "I went all through the house before you came and saw it: the silver downstairs; even a lot of the pictures are cut out of their frames. Looters have been here, and they've made a clean sweep. I hoped you wouldn't see it. Come, let's go."

She lingered, moving the ornaments about on the bureau, still hunting for the letter, and muttering low to herself,

"It doesn't matter. Those things don't matter"—then in a voice suddenly tremulous—"they've left no letter. They've left nothing to tell me if Chrystie's back and where they've gone to."

His hand on her arm drew her toward the door.

"Lorry, dear, there's no good doing this. They were probably put out, had to go in a hurry, hadn't time to do any thinking. When I came in here there was a soldier patrolling along the street. He may have been there when they left; and if he was he may know something about them."

She caught at the hope, was all tingling life again, making for the stairs.

"Of course. I saw him, too, and I dodged behind him. If he was here then he'd know. They might even have left a message with him. Oh, there he is!"

The arch of the hall door framed the soldier's figure, standing on the top of the street steps, a gold-touched statue lifted above the surging procession of heads. With a swooping rush she was at his side.

"Where are the people who were in this house?" she gasped.

The man started and wheeled on her, saw Burrage behind her, and looked from one to the other, surprised.

"How'd you get in there?" he demanded. "That house was cleared out this afternoon."

"Never mind that," said Mark. "We're leaving it now. This lady's looking for her family that she left here earlier in the day."

"Well, I got 'em off—at least I got the only one here, an old lady. She was sittin' there on the grass where you see the chairs. We had orders to put out everyone along this block, and seem' she was old and upset I commandeered an express wagon that was passin' and made the driver take her along."

"Only one lady?" Lorry's voice was husky.

"Yes, miss, only one. I asked her if there was anybody in the house, and she said no, she was alone. There was a Chinaman with her that helped me pack her in comfortable—a smart, handy old chap. I don't know where he went; I didn't see him again."

A heart-piercing sound of suffering burst from the girl, and her face sank into her hands. The soldier eyed her sympathetically.

"I'm sorry, lady, I can't tell you where she's gone. But, believe me, it was no picnic gettin' the people started—some of 'em wantin' to stay, and others of 'em wantin' to take all the furniture along. We didn't have time to ask questions. But you'll happen on her all right. She's safe uptown with friends."

Lorry made no answer, and Mark led her down the steps. He thought her emotion the expression of overwrought nerves, and consoled her with assurances of a speedy finding of Aunt Ellen. She dropped her hands, lifted to his a face that startled him, and cried from the depths of a despair he had yet to understand.

"It's Chrystie, it's Chrystie! She's gone, she's lost!"

Then, pressed close to him, two units absorbed into the moving mass, she told him the story of Chrystie's disappearance.

His heart sank as he listened. Disagreeing in words, he saw the truth of her contention that if Chrystie had been out of town she would have been able to get word to them and would have done it. It looked as if the girl was in the city, hidden somewhere by Mayer. Listening to Lorry's account of the interview in the Argonaut Hotel, he disbelieved what the man had said, rejected her theory of his innocence. Chrystie nerved to a bold deception, the charges in the anonymous letter, all stood to him for signs of Mayer's guilt. He told her none of this, tried to cheer and reassure her, but he saw with a dark dread what might have happened. An hour before he had skirted the edges of the fire, seen the hotel district burning, heard of fallen buildings. Chrystie could have been there keeping a tryst with Mayer. He let his thoughts go no further, stopped them in their race toward a tragedy that would shatter the girl beside him as the city had been shattered.

As they walked her eye ranged over the throng, shot its strained inquiry along the swaying sea of bodies. Chrystie might be among them, might even now be somewhere in this endless army. A woman's figure, caught through a break in the ranks, called her to a running chase; a girl's face, glimpsed over her shoulder, brought her to a standstill, pitifully expectant. He tried to get her to Mrs. Kirkham's, but was met with a refusal he saw there was no use combating. Early night found them in a plaza on a hilltop, moving from group to group.

He had a memory of her never to be forgotten, walking ahead of him, copper-bright, as she fronted the blazing light, black against it, bending to look at a half-hidden face, kneeling beside a covered shape, outstretched in a stupor of sleep. The night had reached its middle hours, the dense stillness of universal repose held the crowded spot, when she finally sank in a helpless exhaustion and slept at his feet. He could do nothing but cover her with his coat, hold vigil over her, move so that his body was a shield to keep the glare from her face. He watched her till the day came, and the noises of the waking life around them called her back to the consciousness of her anxiety.

The loss of relatives and friends was one of the following features of the great disaster. With every means of communication cut off, with a great area flaming, impossible to cross, enormous to circle, with the exodus in some places so hurried no time was left for plans or the sending of messages, with the spread of the fire so rapid no one knew where the houseless thousands would end their march, families were scattered, individuals lost track of. Groups that at dawn had been a compact whole, an hour later had broken, been dispersed, members vanished, disappeared in the inconceivable chaos. To those who suffered this added horror the earthquake remains less a national calamity than the memory of a time when they knew an anguish beyond their dreams of what pain could be.

So it was with Lorry. The wide, encompassing distress touched her no more than the storm does one sick unto death. The growing demolition, spread out under her eyes roused no responsive interest. It was like a story someone was trying to tell her when she was writhing in torment, a nightmare coming in flashes of recollection through a day full of real, poignant terrors.

For two days she and Mark searched. There were periods when she sought the shelter of Mrs. Kirkham's flat, dropped on a bed and slept till the drained reservoir of her strength was refilled, then was up and out again. Mark and the old lady had no power to stay her. He went with her, and Mrs. Kirkham kept a fire in the little oven of bricks in the gutter so that food might be ready when they came back. Returning from their fruitless wanderings, they found the old lady seated in a rocking-chair on the sidewalk, a parasol over her head to keep the cinders off, the coffeepot on the curb and the brick oven hot and ready.

It was Mrs. Kirkham who found Aunt Ellen—safe with friends near the Presidio. Lorry would not go to her, unable to bear her questions. So, Mrs. Kirkham, who had not walked more than three blocks for years, toiled up there, sinking on doorsteps to get back her wind, helping where she could—a baby carried, a woman told to come round to the flat and get "a bite of dinner." She quieted Aunt Ellen, explained that Lorry was with her, said nothing of Chrystie, and toiled home, dropping with groans into her chair by the gutter. When she had got her breath she built up the fire and brewed a fragrant potful of coffee, which she offered to the worn and weary outcasts as they plodded past.

There was not a plaza or square in that part of the city to which Lorry and Mark did not go. They hunted among the countless hoards that spread over the lawns in Golden Gate Park, and covered the hillsides of the Presidio. They went through the temporary hospitals—wards given to the sick and injured in the military barracks, tent villages on the parade ground. They saw strange sights, terrible sights; birth and death under the trees in the open; saw a heroism, undaunted and undismayed; saw men and women, ruined and homeless, offering aid, succoring distress, gallant, selfless, forever memorable.

Night came upon them in these teeming camping grounds. Along the road's edges the lights of tiny fires—allowed for cooking—broke out in a line of jeweled sparks. Women bent over them; men lighted their pipes and lay or squatted round these rude hearths, all that they had of home. The smell of supper rose appetizingly, coffee simmering, bacon frying. Calls went back and forth for that most valued of possessions, a can opener. There was laughter, jokes passed over exchanges of food, an excess of tea here swapped for a loaf of bread there, a bottle of Zinfandel for a box of sardines. It was like a great, democratic picnic to which everybody had been invited—the rich, the poor, the foreign elements, white, black and yellow, the old and the young, the good and bad, virtue from Pacific Avenue, vice from Dupont Street, the prominent citizen and the derelict from the Barbary Coast.

The fire flung its banners across the sky, a vast lighting up for them, under which they went about the business of living. At intervals, booming through the sounds of their habitation, came the dynamite explosions blowing up the city in blocks. When the muffled roar was over, the gathering quiet was pierced by the thin, high notes of gramophones. From the shadow of trees Caruso's voice rose in the swaggering lilt of "La Donna e Mobile," to be answered by Melba's, crystal-sweet, from a machine stored in a crowded cart. There were ragtime melodies, and someone had a record of "Marching Through Georgia" that always drew forth applause. Then, as the night advanced, a gradual hush fell, a slow sinking down into silence, broken by a child's querulous cry, a groan of pain, the smothered mutterings of a dreamer. Like the slain on a battlefield, they lay on the roadside, dotted over the slopes, thick as fallen leaves under the trees, their faces buried in arms or wrappings against the fall of cinders and the hot glare.

In all these places Lorry and Mark sent out that call for the lost which park and reservation soon grew to know and echo. Standing on a rise of ground Mark would cry with the full force of his lungs, "Is Chrystie Alston there?" The shout spread like a ring on water, and at the limits of its carrying power, was taken up and repeated. They could hear it fainter in a strange voice—"Is Chrystie Alston there?"—then fainter still as voice after voice took it up, sent it on, threw it like a ball from hand to hand, till, a winged question, it had traversed the place. But there was no answer, no jubilant response to be relayed back, no Chrystie running toward them with welcoming face.

Late on the second night he induced her to go back to Mrs. Kirkham's. She was heavy on his arm, stumbling as she walked, not answering his attempts at cheer. He delivered her over to the old lady, who had to help her to bed, then sat and waited in the dining room. No lights were allowed in any house, and this room was chosen as the place of their night counsels because of the illumination that came in through the open hole of the fireplace, wrenched out when the chimney fell. When Mrs. Kirkham came back he and she exchanged a somber look, and the old lady voiced both their thoughts:

"She can't stand this. She can't go on. She's hardly able to move now. What shall we do?"

Their consultation brought them nowhere. As things stood there was no way of instituting a more extended search. The police could be of no assistance, overwhelmed with their labors; individuals who might have helped were lost in the melee; money was as useless as strings of cowrie shells.

At dawn Mrs. Kirkham stole away to come back presently saying the girl was sleeping.

"She looks like the dead," she whispered. "She hasn't strength enough to go out again. I can keep her here now."

Mark got up.

"Then I'll go; it's what I've been waiting for. Without her I can cover a big area; move quick. I want to try the other side of town. In my opinion Mayer had Chrystie somewhere. She was prepared for a journey—the trunk and the money show that—and the journey was to be with him. If he got her off we'll hear from her in a day or two. If he didn't she's in the city, and it's just possible she drifted or was caught in the Mission crowd. Anyway, I'm going to try that section. Tell Lorry I've gone there. Keep up her hope, and for heaven's sake try to keep her quiet. I'll be back by evening."

So he went forth. It seemed a blind errand—to find a woman gone without leaving a trace, in a city where two hundred thousand people were homeless and wandering. But it was a time when the common sense of every day was overleaped, when men attempted and achieved beyond the limits of reason and probability.

Half an hour after he had left the flat he met with a piece of luck that gave his spirit a brace. On the steps of a large house, deserted for two days, he came upon one of his companion clerks. This youth, son of the rich, had procured a horse and delivery wagon and had come back to carry away silver and valuables left piled in the front hall. Also he had a bicycle, an article just then of inestimable value, and hearing Mark's intention of crossing the city, loaned it to him.

People who live in the Mission are still wont, when the great quake is spoken of, to remember the man on the bicycle. So many of them saw him, so many of them were stopped and questioned by him. Looking for a lady, he told them, and that he looked far and wide they could testify. He was seen close to the fire line, up along the streets that stretched back from it, in among the crowds camped on the vacant lots, through the plazas and the tents that were starting up like mushrooms in every clear space. In the little shack where the Despatch was getting out its first paper, full of advertisements for the lost and offers of shelter to the outcast, he turned up at midday. He saw Crowder there, told him the situation, and left with him an advertisement "for any news of Chrystie Alston."

Late afternoon saw him back on the edges of the Mission Hills. The great human wave here had reached the limit of its wash. The throng was thinner, dwindling to isolated groups. Wheeling his bicycle he threaded a way among them, looking, scrutinizing, asking his questions. But no one had any comfort for him, heads were shaken, hands uplifted and dropped in silent sign of ignorance.

He followed a road that ascended by houses, steps and porches crowded with refugees, to the higher slopes where the buildings were small and far apart. The road shriveled to a dusty track, and leaning his bicycle against the fence he sat down. He felt an exhaustion, bodily and spiritual, and propping his elbows on his knees, let his forehead sink on his hands. For a space he thought of nothing but Lorry waiting for news and his return to her that night.

A woman's voice, coming from the hill above roused him,

"Say, mister, have you got a bicycle?"

He started and turning saw a girl running down the slope toward him. She came with a breathless speed—a grotesque figure, thin and dark, loose cotton garments eddying back from her body, her feet in beaded, high-heeled slippers sure and light among the rolling stones.

"Yes," he said, rising, "I've got a bicycle."

She came on, panting, her hair in the swiftness of her progress blown out in a black mist from her brow. Her face, dirty and smoke-smeared, struck him as vaguely familiar.

"I saw you from the barn up there," she jerked her hand backward to a barn on the summit, "and I just made a dash down to catch you." She landed against the fence with a violent jolt. "This morning a man who'd come up from below told me the Despatch was going to be published with advertisements in it."

"It is," he said. "By tomorrow probably."

"Are you going down there again?" She swept the city with a grimed, brown hand.

"I'm going down sometime, not right now."

"Any time'll do—only the sooner the better. I've got an advertisement to put in. Will you take it?"

He nodded. He would be able to do it tomorrow.

She smiled, and with the flash of her teeth and something of gamin roguishness in her expression, the feeling that he had seen her before—knew her—grew stronger. He eyed her, puzzled, and seeing the look, she grinned in gay amusement.

"I guess you know me, a good many people do. But my make-up's new—dirt. Water's too valuable to use for washing."

He was not quite sure yet, and his expression showed it. That made her laugh, a mischievous note.

"Ain't you ever been to the Albion, young man?"

"Oh!" he breathed. "Why, of course—Pancha Lopez!"

"Come on then," she cried; "now we're introduced. Come up while I write the ad."

She drew away from the fence while he wheeled his bicycle in through a break in the pickets. As she moved along the path in front of him, she called back:

"We're up here in the barn, our castle on the hill. It mayn't look much from the outside, but it's roomy and the view's fine. Better than being crowded into the houses with the people sleeping on the floors. They'd have taken us in, any of 'em, but we chose the barn—quieter and more air. My pa's with me." She turned and threw a challenging glance at him. "You didn't know I had a pa? Well, I have and a good one." Then she raised her voice and called: "Pa, hello! I've corralled a man who'll take that ad."

From the open door of the barn a man of burly figure appeared. He nodded to Mark, bluffly friendly.

"That's good. We didn't know how we was to get in from this far, and we bin lookin' out for someone." Then turning to the girl, "You get busy? honey, and write it. We don't want to waste this young feller's time."

They entered the barn, a wide, shadowy place, cool and quiet, with hay piled in the back. Depressions in it showed where they had been sleeping, a horse blanket folded neatly beside each nest. To the left an open door led into what seemed a room for tools and farm supplies. Mark could see one corner where below a line of pegs gunny sacks, stacked and bulging, leaned against the wall.

"Now if you'll further oblige me with a pencil and paper," said the girl, "I'll tackle it, though writing's not my strong suit."

He pulled out a letter—offering a clean back—and a fountain pen. The girl took them, then stood in dubious irresolution, looking at them with uneasy eyes.

"I don't know as I can," she said. "I don't know how to put it. I guess you'd do it better. I'll tell you and you write."

"Very well." She handed the things back, and going to the wall he placed the letter against it and, the pen lifted, turned to her. "Go ahead, I'm ready."

The girl, baffled and uncertain, looked for help to her father.

"How'll I begin?"

"Tell him what it's about," he suggested. "You give him the facts, and he'll put 'em into shape."

"Well, we've got a sick woman here, and we don't know who she is. We found her in a hotel, hit on the head, and she's not spoken much yet—not anything that'll give any clew to where she comes from or who she belongs to. That's what the ad's for. She's a lady, young, and she's tall—nearly as tall as you. Blonde, blue eyes and golden hair, and she's got three rings—" She stopped, the words dying before the expression of the young man's face.

"Where is she?" he said.

Pancha pointed to the room on the left, saw the letter drop to the floor as he turned and ran for the doorway, saw him enter and heard his loud ejaculation.

For a moment she and her father stared, open-mouthed, at one another, then she went to the door. In the room, swept with pure airs from the open window, the light subdued by a curtain of gunny sacks, the young man was kneeling by the side of the mattress, his hand on the sick woman's. She was looking at him intently, a slow intelligence gathering in her eyes. The ghost of a smile touched her lips, and they parted to emit in the small voice of a child,

"Marquis de Lafayette."



CHAPTER XXXVII

HAIL AND FAREWELL

The Alstons had taken a house in San Rafael. It was a big comfortable place with engirdling balconies whence one looked upon the blossoming beauties of a May-time garden. Aunt Ellen thought it much too large, but when the settling down was accomplished, saw why Lorry had wanted so much room. Mrs. Kirkham was invited over from town "to stay as long as she liked," and now for a week there had been visitors from up country—Mrs. Burrage and Sadie.

It made quite a houseful and Fong, with a new second boy to break in, was exceedingly busy. He had brushed aside Lorry's suggestion that with half the city in ruins and nobody caring what they ate, simple meals would suffice. That was all very well for other people—let them live frugally if they liked; Fong saw the situation from another angle. Back in his old place, his young ladies blooming under his eye, he gave forth his contentment in the exercise of his talents. Gastronomic masterpieces came daily from his hands, each one a note in his hymn of thanksgiving.

When the fire was under control he had turned up at Mrs. Kirkham's, saying he had thought "Miss Lolly" would be there. Then he had taken Lorry's jewel box from under his coat and held it out to her, answering her surprise with a series of smiling nods. He had everything safe, down on the water front—the silver, the best glass, all the good clothes and most of the pictures which he cut from their frames. Yes, he had moved them after Aunt Ellen left, having packed them earlier in the day and got a friend from Chinatown who had a butcher's wagon. They had worked together, taken the things out through the back alley, very quiet, very quick; the soldiers never saw them. He had driven across town to a North Beach wharf, hired a fishing smack, and with two Italians for crew, cast off and sailed about the bay for three days.

"I stay on boat all time," he said. "My business mind your stuff. I watch out, no leave dagoes, no go sleep. All locked up now. Chinamen hide him, keep him safe. I bring back when you get good house."

When they moved to San Rafael he brought them back, a load that must have filled the butcher's wagon to its hood. His young ladies' gratitude pleased him, but to their offers of a reward he would not listen.

"Old Chinaman take care of my boss's house like my boss want me. Bad time, good time, ally samey. You no make earthquake—he come—my job help like evly day. I no good Chinaman if I don't. I no get paid extla for do my job."

The girls, after fruitless efforts, had to give in. Afterward, in their rooms when they sorted the clothes—the two beds were covered with them—they cried and laughed over the useless finery. Fong had carried away only the richest and costliest—evening dresses, lace petticoats, opera wraps, furs, high-heeled slippers, nothing that could be worn as life was now.

"We'll have to go about in ball dresses for the rest of the summer," said Chrystie, giggling hysterically. "How nice you'll look weeding the garden in an ermine stole and white satin slippers."

"We've got to wear them somewhere," Lorry decided.

"For one reason we've almost nothing else, and for another—and the real one—Fong mustn't know he's rescued the wrong things. I will weed the garden in white satin slippers, and I'll put on a ball dress for dinner every night."

Chrystie was well again now. Drowsing on the balcony in the steamer chair and taking sun baths in the garden had restored her, if not quite to her old rosy robustness, to a pale imitation of her once glowing self. The rest of her hair had been cut off, and her shaven poll was hidden by a lace cap with a fringe of false curls sewed to its edge. This was very becoming and in sweeping draperies—some of the evening dresses made over into tea gowns—she was an attractive figure, her charms enhanced by a softening delicacy.

The dark episode of her disappearance was allowed to rest in silence. She and Lorry had threshed it out as far as Lorry thought fit. That Boye Mayer had dropped out of sight was all Chrystie knew. Some day later she would hear the truth, which Lorry had learned from Pancha Lopez. Lorry had also decided that the world must never know just what did happen to the second Miss Alston. The advertisement in the Despatch was withdrawn in time, and those who shared the knowledge were sworn to secrecy. Her efforts to invent a plausible explanation caused Chrystie intense amusement. She hid it at first, was properly attentive and helpful, but to see Lorry trying to tell lies, worrying and struggling over it, was too much. A day came when she forgot both manners and sympathy, began to titter and then was lost. Lorry was vexed at first, looked cross, but when the sinner gasped out, "Oh, Lorry, I never thought I'd see you come to this," couldn't help laughing herself.

On a bright Saturday afternoon Chrystie and Sadie were sitting on the front balcony in the shade of the Marechal Niel rose. Mrs. Burrage and Lorry had gone for a drive, later to meet Mark—who was to stay with them over Sunday—at the station. Upstairs Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Kirkham were closeted with a dressmaker, fashioning festal attire. For that night there was to be a dinner, the first since the move. Beside the household Mark was coming, and Crowder was expected on a later train with Pancha Lopez and her father—eight people, quite an affair. Fong had been marketing half the morning, and was now in the kitchen in a state of temperamental irritation, having even swept Lorry from his presence with a commanding, "Go away, Miss Lolly. I get clazy if you wolly me now."

Sadie and Chrystie had become very friendly. Sadie was not disinclined to adore the youngest Miss Alston, so easy to get on with, so full of fun and chatter. Chrystie had fulfilled her expectations of what an heiress should be, handsome as a picture, clothed in silken splendors, regally accepting her plenty, carelessly spendthrift.

Lorry had rather disappointed her. She was not pretty, didn't seem to care what she had on, and was so quiet. And as an engaged girl there was nothing romantic about her, no shy glances at Mark, no surreptitious hand pressures. Sadie would have set her down as dreadfully matter-of-fact except that now and then she did such queer, unexpected things. For example the first afternoon they were there, she had astonished Sadie by suddenly getting up and without a word kissing Mother on the forehead. Mother, whom you never could count on, had begun to talk about the days when she was waitress in The Golden Nugget Hotel—broke into it as if it didn't matter at all. It made Sadie get hot all over; she didn't suppose they knew, and under her eyelids looked from one girl to the other to see how they'd take it. They didn't show anything, only seemed interested, and Sadie was calming down when Mother started off on George Alston—how fine he used to treat her and all that. It was then that Lorry did the queer thing—not a word out of her; just got up and kissed Mother and sat down. In her heart Sadie marveled at the perversity of men—Mark to have fallen in love with the elder when the younger sister was there!

She spoke about it to Mother upstairs that night, but Mother was unsatisfactory, smiled ambiguously and said:

"I guess Mark's the smart one of our family."

In the shade of the Marechal Niel rose the girls talked and Chrystie, her tongue unloosed by growing intimacy, told about her wild adventure. She could not help it; after all Sadie knew a lot already, and it hampered conversation and the spontaneities of friendship to have to stop and think whether one ought to say this or not say that. It completed Sadie's subjugation: here was a romance. She breathlessly listened, in a state of staring attention that would have made a less garrulous person than Chrystie tell secrets. When she knew all she couldn't help asking—no girl could:

"But did you love him really?"

Chrystie, stretching a white hand for a branch of the rose and drawing it, blossom-weighted, to her face, answered:

"No, I thought I did at first; it was so exciting and all the girls said he was such a star. But I was always afraid of him. He sort of magnetized me—made me feel I'd be a poor-spirited chump if I didn't run away with him. You don't want to have a man think that about you, so I said I would and I did go. But that night—shall I ever forget it? It was pure misery."

"Do you think you would have gone with him?"

"I guess so, just because I hadn't the nerve not to. I felt as if I had to see it through—was sort of pledged to it. Maybe I didn't want to go back on him, and maybe I was ashamed to. You can hardly call the earthquake a piece of luck, but it was for me."

She sniffed at the roses while Sadie eyed her almost awed. Eighteen and with this behind her! The more she knew of the youngest Miss Alston the more her respect and admiration increased. She waited expectantly for the heroine to resume, which she did after a last, luxurious inhalation of the rose's breath.

"Wasn't it wonderful that the person who found me was Pancha Lopez? I keep thinking of it all the time. You know I was always crazy about her, but I never thought I'd meet her. And then to finally do it the way I did!"

Sadie's comment showed a proper comprehension of this strange happening, and then she wanted to know what Pancha Lopez was like.

"Oh, she's a priceless thing—there's nobody anywhere like her, in looks or any other way. She's different. You can't take your eyes off her, and yet she's not pretty. Remarkable people never are."

This was a new thought to Sadie who, absorbing it slowly, ventured a safe:

"Aren't they?"

"No, it's only the second-class ones who don't amount to anything who are good-looking. I must say it was a blow to me to hear that her real name was Michaels. But of course actresses generally have other names, and Lopez does belong to her in a sort of way. She told Lorry about it and about her father, too. Nobody knew she had a father."

"What's he like?"

"Oh, he's a grand old dear—rough, but he would be naturally, just a miner all his life. He took care of me as if I was a baby."

"He won't have to be a miner any more now."

They exchanged a glance of bright meaning, and Chrystie, drawing herself up in the chair, spoke with solemn emphasis:

"Sadie, I've always been glad I had money, because I'd be lost without it. But I'm glad now for another reason—because we could do something for those two. If we couldn't they'd have had to go back and begin all over again. Pancha's got some money saved up, but it'll be a long time before she gets it, and Lorry says it wouldn't be enough any way. Think of that kind old bear with his hair getting gray trudging up and down the Mother Lode! If I'd thought that was to go on I'd never have had a peaceful night's sleep again. We'd have had to adopt him, and I know he wouldn't have liked that. Now, thank heaven, we can make him comfortable in his own way."

"Did he tell you what it was he wanted to do?"

"No, he wouldn't, but Lorry got hold of Pancha and wormed it all out of her. For years he's been longing to settle down on a ranch—that was his dream. Poor little dream! Well, it's coming true. We've got several ranches, but there's only one that counts—in Mexico. There's a small one down in Kern that father bought ages ago for a weighmaster he had who got consumption. He died there—the weighmaster, I mean—and we've gone on renting it out and the trustees having all sorts of bother with the tenants. So that's going to be Mr. Michael's. Lorry had the transfer made, or whatever you call it, yesterday in town. She's going to give him the papers tonight."

"It'll be the last time you'll see them for a long while, I guess."

Chrystie, suddenly pensive, dropped back in the chair.

"Um, it will. Before we see Pancha again it may be years. She's going abroad to study. But she's promised to write and tell us all about how she's getting on. And when she comes back—a real grand opera singer—won't I be in a state! I get all wrought up now thinking about it. If she makes her first appearance in New York I'm going on there to see her."

"How long will it take—getting her ready, training her and teaching her?"

"No one can tell exactly. People here who've heard her and know about those things say she has such a fine voice and is so quick and clever that she might go on the stage over there in a year or two. She's got a lot to learn of course; even the way I feel about her I can see she needs to be more educated. But no matter how long it takes she's going to be financed—that's what they call it—till she's finished and ready. Lorry's guaranteed that."

"Lorry's awful grateful to them, isn't she?"

"Lorry!" Chrystie's glance showed surprise at such a question. "She's ready to give them everything she has. She's not just grateful, she's bowed down with it. Why she advertised in all the papers for that doctor who saw me on the floor, and now she's found him she'd build him a whole hospital if he'd let her. Lorry's not like me. She's got deep feelings."

The carriage, turning in at the gate, stopped the conversation, and Chrystie rose and sauntered to the top of the steps. Mother Burrage, in her new black silk mantle, bought through a catalogue, and a perfect fit, came up the path, Mark and Lorry behind her. Mark waved a greeting hand and Lorry called instructions—please tell Fong to bring out something cold to drink and tell Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Kirkham to come downstairs even if they were in their wrappers—they must be worn out shut up with the dressmaker all day. It was exactly the sort of thing Sadie knew she would say—and Mark only just off the train.

The dinner that night was a brilliant success. Fong had outdone himself, the menu was a triumph, the table a shining splendor. He had insisted on setting it—no green second boy could lay a hand on the family treasures, now almost sacred, like vessels lost from a church and miraculously restored. In the center he had placed the great silver bowl given to George Alston by the miners of The Silver Queen when he had retired from the management. Fong had been at the presentation ceremony, and valued the bowl above all his old boss's possessions. In the flight from the Pine Street house he had trusted it to no hands but his own, and finding it hard to hold had carried it on his head. He had also elected to wait on the table—the reunion had a character of intimacy upon which no second boy should intrude—and to do the occasion honor had put on his lilac crepe jacket and green silk trousers. From behind the chairs he looked approvingly at the glistening spread of silver and glass, the flowered mound of the Silver Queen bowl, the ring of faces, and "Miss Lolly" and "Miss Clist" in the dresses he had saved.

Clothes of any kind were at a premium, and the Misses Alstons' hospitality extended to their wardrobe. Sadie had no need to avail herself of it; she had stocked hers well before coming, making a special trip to Sacramento for that purpose. But Pancha, who had lost everything but a nightgown and slippers, was scantily provided. Before dinner there had been a withdrawal to Lorry's room, whence had issued much laughter and cries of admiration from Chrystie. Now, between Mark and Crowder, Pancha loomed radiant, duskily flushed, gleamingly scintillant, in the white net dress with the crystal trimmings that Lorry had worn on an eventful night.

Yes, it was a very fine dinner. At intervals each told his neighbor so, and then told his hostess, and then told Fong. Crowder, whose customary haunts were burned and who was eating anything, anywhere, sighed rapturously over every succeeding course, and Mrs. Kirkham said she'd never seen its peer "except in Virginia in the seventies." Toward the end of it they drank toasts—to Lorry and Mark on their engagement, to Mother and Sadie as the new relations, to Pancha and Mr. Michaels as the saviors, to Chrystie on her restoration to health, to Crowder as the mutual friend, to Aunt Ellen as the ambulating chaperon, to Mrs. Kirkham as the dispenser of hospitality and wisdom, and finally, on their feet with raised glasses, to Fong.

The party broke up early; there were trains and boats to catch for those going back to the city. With the hour of departure a drop came in their high spirits, a prevailing pensiveness in the face of farewells. Chrystie quite broke down, kissed Mr. Michaels to his great confusion, and wept in Pancha's arms. Father and daughter were to go their several ways early in the week and this was good-by. They stumbled over last phrases to Lorry, good wishes, reiterated thanks. She hushed them, hurried their adieux to the others, herself affected but anxious to get them off; such excitement was bad for Chrystie. As the carriage rolled away she stood on the steps, a waving hand aloft, hearing over the roll of the wheels and the talk in the hall, Pancha's clear voice calling, "Good-by, good-by; oh, good-by!"

When she came back the others were already preparing to disperse for bed. The old ladies were tired, yawning as they exchanged good-nights and moved, heavy-footed, for the stairs. They began to mount, their silks rustling, muttering wearily as they toiled upward. Chrystie had to go too, at once, and straight to bed; no reading or talking to Sadie. She agreed dejectedly and trailed after the ascending group, throwing sleepy farewells over her shoulder.

Sadie, who felt very wide-awake, was for lingering. It was only ten, and what with the unwonted excitement and two cups of black coffee, she did not feel at all inclined toward sleep. She thought she would stay down a little longer, and then her glance slipping from the file of backs fell on her brother and Lorry, side by side, their faces raised, their eyes on the retreating procession. Sadie waited a moment, then seeing they made no move to follow it, bade them a brisk good-night and went up the stairs herself.

THE END