"No. He begin to ask me some questions about old times and Starvation Camp, and I'd made up my mind to disremember all them things ez I told you, Gabe, fur I'm jest sick of being called a cannon-ball, so I jest disremembered everything ez fast ez he asked it, until he sez, sez he to this lady, 'she evidently knows nothin' o' the whole thing.' But the lady had been tryin' to stop his askin' questions, and he'd been kinder signin' to me not to answer too. Oh, she's cute, Gabe; I could see thet ez soon ez I set down." "What did she look like, Olly?" said Gabriel, with an affectation of carelessness, but still by no means yet entirely relieved in his mind. "Oh, she didn't look like Mrs. Markle, Gabe, or any o' thet kind. A kinder short woman, with white teeth, and a small waist, and good clo'es. I didn't sort o' take to her much, Gabe, though she was very kind to me. I don't know ez I could say ezackly what she did look like; I reckon thar ain't anybody about yer looks like she. Saints and goodness! Gabe, that's her now; thar she is!" Something darkened the doorway. Gabriel, looking up, beheld the woman he had saved in the cañon. It was Madame Devarges! BOOK III. _THE LEAD._ CHAPTER I. AN OLD PIONEER OF '49. A thick fog, dense, impenetrable, bluish-grey and raw, marked the advent of the gentle summer of 1854 on the California coast. The brief immature spring was scarcely yet over; there were flowers still to be seen on the outlying hills around San Francisco, and the wild oats were yet green on the Contra Costa mountains. But the wild oats were hidden under a dim India-inky veil, and the wild flowers accepted the joyless embraces of the fog with a staring waxen rigidity. In short, the weather was so uncomfortable that the average Californian was more than ever inclined to impress the stranger aggressively with the fact that fogs were healthy, and that it was the "finest climate on the earth."