"The wretched dead appeared to have expired from hunger, although one was evidently a victim"---- The tongue of the translator hesitated a moment, and then with an air of proud superiority to the difficulties of the English language, he resumed-- "A victim to fly poison. It is to be regretted that among the victims was the famous Doctor Paul Devarges, a Natural, and collector of the stuffed Bird and Beast, a name most illustrious in science." The secretary paused, his voice dropped its pretentious pitch, he lifted his eyes from the paper, and fixing them on Grace, repeated, deliberately-- "The bodies who were identified were those of Paul Devarges and Grace Conroy." "Oh, no! no!" said Grace, clasping her hands, wildly; "it is a mistake! You are trying to frighten me, a poor, helpless, friendless girl! You are punishing me, gentlemen, because you know I have done wrong, because you think I have lied! Oh, have pity, gentlemen. My God--save me--Philip!" And with a loud, despairing cry, she rose to her feet, caught at the clustering tendrils of her hair, raised her little hands, palms upward, high in the air, and then sank perpendicularly, as if crushed and beaten flat, a pale and senseless heap upon the floor. The Commander stooped over the prostrate girl. "Send Manuela here," he said quickly, waving aside the proffered aid of the secretary, with an impatient gesture quite unlike his usual gravity, as he lifted the unconscious Grace in his arms. An Indian waiting-woman hurriedly appeared, and assisted the Commander to lay the fainting girl upon a couch. "Poor child!" said the Commander, as Manuela, bending over Grace, unloosed her garments with sympathetic feminine hands. "Poor little one, and without a father!" "Poor woman!" said Manuela to herself, half aloud; "and without a husband." BOOK II. _AFTER FIVE YEARS._ CHAPTER I. ONE HORSE GULCH. It was a season of unexampled prosperity in One Horse Gulch. Even the despondent original locator, who, in a fit of depressed alcoholism, had given it that infelicitous title, would have admitted its injustice, but that he fell a victim to the "craftily qualified" cups of San Francisco long before the Gulch had become prosperous. "Hed Jim stuck to straight whisky he might hev got his pile outer the very ledge whar his cabin stood," said a local critic. But Jim did not; after taking a thousand dollars from his claim, he had flown to San Franciscos, where, gorgeously arrayed, he had flitted from champagne to cognac, and from gin to lager beer, until he brought his gilded and ephemeral existence to a close in the country hospital.