unaccountable interest in it. One talk with Pancha, it seems, had banished Loring's intention of confiding his suspicion and the whole story, in fact, to Mr. Traynor. And so there was no friend to whom he could turn. Five days after his arrival in San Francisco Loring found himself facing charges of the gravest nature, for Traynor, being sent for, told his story to the general in person, and Loring stood alone. CHAPTER XV. April had gone, and May and June was well-nigh half over. The old semaphore of Telegraph Hill would have worn itself out signaling sidewheel steamers had it still been in operation. The transcontinental railway was stretching out up the valley of the Platte toward the center of the continent, but Wells-Fargo, and the pony express charging a dollar a letter, were the only transcontinental rapid transit of the day. People still went to and from the distant East by way of Aspinwall and Panama, and the big boats of the Pacific mail were crowded, going or coming; and one bright June day two women in mourning were escorted aboard the Sonora and shown to their little stateroom, one a decidedly pretty girl, the other a sad-faced, careworn, delicate looking widow, ten or twelve years apparently the senior. They sailed with only one friend to see them off, an aide-de-camp of the commanding general, yet not without much curiosity on part of the younger woman as to the composition of the passenger list. Even before they were beyond the rocky scarp of Alcatraz, for few things are impossible to a pretty woman, she had been able to secure a copy and to say, with bated breath, to the languid invalid: "At least he's not going on this ship. It might be better if he were." For Miss Geraldine Allyn had not lost faith in her power to charm.