To the girl who had been scarcely less at his bedside than the old woman who nominally nursed him, these broken fragments of wild talk had been like bits of jewels from which her mind had fashioned a fantastic mosaic. The mystery surrounding the stranger would, in any case, have appealed strongly to her quick fancy, but when to this was added the brilliancy of his delirious ravings, it is small wonder that her imagination took fire, and she wove endless romances, in all of which the unconscious sick man figured as the hero. Scraps of talk in an unknown tongue, a few sonorous foreign words, a little ignorance concerning matters in reality commonplace enough, have, in many a case before, been the sufficient foundations for a gorgeous _fata morgana_ of fancy. The stranger had been thrown ashore only partially dressed, and with nothing upon him which bore a name. A belt around his waist contained about fifteen hundred dollars in bills and a small quantity of gold-dust. From the presence of this latter they had speculated that the wounded man might be a returning Californian, yet his clothing was of too fine texture and manufacture for this supposition. Several persons, seeking for friends lost in the disaster from which he came, had vainly endeavored to identify him, and his description had been given in the New York papers; but without result. There seemed, upon the whole, to be no especial hope of obtaining any satisfactory information regarding the sick man until he was able to furnish it himself; and to-day for the first time the watcher found in his eyes the light of returning reason. She felt as if upon the threshold of a great discovery. She smiled softly to herself to think how eager she had become over this mystery; to recognize how large a place the stranger occupied in her thoughts; yet she could but acknowledge to herself that this was an inevitable consequence of the existence which surrounded her. The life into which the wounded man had been driven by the currents of the sea and those stronger currents of the universe which we call Fate was a sufficiently monotonous one. The household into which he had been received consisted of an old gentleman, broken alike in health and fortune, so that while the establishment over which presided his only child was not one of absolute want, it was often straitened by the necessity of uncomfortable economies. Alone with an old family servant, the father and daughter lived on in the homestead which the wealth of their ancestors had improved, but which their present revenues were inadequate to preserve in proper state. One day with them was so like every other day that the differences of the calendar seemed purely empirical, even when assisted by such diversity as old Sarah, the faithful retainer, was able to compass in the matter of the viands which, at stated periods in the week, appeared upon their frugal table.