flagstaff among the rocks. Believe me, your friend and grateful debtor,

"W. M."


Mrs. Bunker cast a hasty glance around her, and pressed the letter
to her lips. It was a sudden consummation of her vaguest, half-formed
wishes, the realization of her wildest dreams! To be the confidante of
the gallant but melancholy hero in his lonely exile and persecution was
to satisfy all the unformulated romantic fancies of her girlish reading;
to be later, perhaps, the Flora Macdonald of a middle-aged Prince
Charlie did not, however, evoke any ludicrous associations in her mind.
Her feminine fancy exalted the escaped duelist and alleged assassin into
a social martyr. His actual small political intrigues and ignoble aims
of office seemed to her little different from those aspirations of
royalty which she had read about--as perhaps they were. Indeed, it is to
be feared that in foolish little Mrs. Bunker, Wynyard Marion had found
the old feminine adoration of pretension and privilege which every
rascal has taken advantage of since the flood.

Howbeit, the next morning after she had returned and Zephas had sailed
away, she flew a red bandana handkerchief on the little flagstaff before
the house. A few hours later, a boat appeared mysteriously from around
the Point. Its only occupant--a common sailor--asked her name, and
handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been
at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some
ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her
husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to
deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly
to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a note to Marion, which, with