"Well, there at the Hidalgo Inn, I met with Col. Anglesea, and sorter got acquainted long of him. He had been out on the plains with a lot of English officers, a-hunting of the buffalo, or pretending to do it, and now he was on his way home, so he said--gwine to sail from 'Frisco to York, and then to Liverpool. He said as he had inwested half a million o' money in Californy. Lord sakes, how that man lied! "Then, like a plagued fool as I was, with nobody to advise me--don't tell me about wimmen having any sense! They always get coaxed, or swindled, or scared out o' their money!--I goes and tells that blamed beat and cheat about my hundred and twenty-three thousand four hundred and fifty dollars, and asks his opinion how I ought to inwest it. "And he tells me cock-and-bull stories about companies, and shares, and per cents. and things that I knew nothing about. And he wanted me to give him the money to inwest for me, and save me the trouble and 'noyance. "But I wasn't quite such a donkey as that, nyther! I just wouldn't trust him with a dollar! No more would I sign any paper that he brought me. No, not one! Yet I did like the insiniwating creetur' to such an extent, even then, that I couldn't bear to hurt his feelings by seeming to distrust him, and so I always made some excuse for not doing what he recommended. "After that he changed his course and began to make love to me! Lord, how that man could make love! Ask that gal of your'n! I reckon she could tell you! "Well, I don't know how it was to this day! I must 'a' been bewitched! But I was such a cornsarned fool that I went and married him! And two weeks after that he levanted, with all my money! Leastways, all to a trifle of about twenty dollars, which I had about me in my room, and which just was enough to take me back to Wild Cats' Gulch. And, if ever you did see a chop-fallen cuss going home, that was me! The hotel people had even kept my boxes for my board! "Oh, but the boys was mad when they heard all about it! They was 'most as mad with me for being such a fool as they was with him for robbing me. But they put me up to following of him, telling me if any one could run a man to earth, it would be an injured woman. And they put up a pile for me, and took my boxes out of quod, at the Hidalgo, and started me on my way to 'Frisco, for I knowed he had made for that port. "And there I found out he had sailed in the _Eglea_ for New Orleans, and I took the first steamer to that port. There I learned that he had stopped at the St. Charles Hotel for a few days, and had then gone to Savannah. Lord, what a chase I had! From Savannah to Mobile; from Mobile to Havana; from Havana back to St. Francisco. And there I heard that he had sailed for Baltimore!