her off, and wot's more I got her shipped to Mazatlan, where she'll join
Marion, and the two are goin' back to Virginy, where I guess they won't
trouble Californy again. Ye know now, deary," he went on, speaking with
difficulty through Mrs. Bunker's clinging arms and fast dripping tears,
"why I didn't heave to to say 'good-by.' But it's all over now--I've
made a clean breast of it, Mollie--and don't you cry!"

But it was NOT all over. For a moment later Captain Bunker began to
fumble in his waistcoat pocket with the one hand that was not clasping
his wife's waist. "One thing more, Mollie; when I left her and refused
to take any of her dimons, she put a queer sort o' ring into my hand,
and told me with a kind o' mischievious, bedevilin' smile, that I
must keep it to remember her by. Here it is--why, Mollie lass! are you
crazy?"

She had snatched it from his fingers and was running swiftly from the
cottage out into the tempestuous night. He followed closely, until
she reached the edge of the rocks. And only then, in the struggling,
fast-flying moonlight, she raised a passionate hand, and threw it far
into the sea!

As he led her back to the cottage she said she was jealous, and honest
Captain Bunker, with his arm around her, felt himself the happiest man
in the world!

*****

From that day the flag flew regularly over the rocky shelf, and, in
time, bugles and morning drumbeats were wafted from it to the decks of
passing ships. For the Federal Government had adjudged the land for its