Anna looked wonderingly at him, while he continued, taking her hand and removing from it a plain gold ring, which grandma had given her on her fifteenth birthday, “You must let me wear this as a talisman to protect me from evil. Whenever I am tempted I shall look at it and be saved.” Anna hesitated awhile, but the soft, handsome eyes of Herbert Langley had woven around her a spell she could not break, and at last she consented, receiving from him in return a diamond ring, which he told her was worth two hundred dollars. When this became known to mother she very wisely insisted on Anna’s returning it, and together with the note explaining the why and the wherefore it went back to its owner, who immediately replied by a letter, the contents of which were carefully kept from us all. The effect, however, was plainly visible; for, from the time of its receipt we lost our merry, light-hearted sister, and in her place there moved among us a sober, listless girl, whom grandma called foolish, and whom Charlie pronounced “lovesick.” Herbert’s letter was soon answered, but when Anna requested my father to put it in the P. O. he refused, telling her “she should not correspond with such a _drunken dog_.” Possibly it was wrong in him thus to address her, for kind words and persuasive arguments might have won her to reason, but now a spirit of opposition was roused—“Herbert was wronged—misunderstood”—so Anna thought, and the letter which father refused to take, was conveyed by other hands, a postscript longer than the letter itself being first added. After this there was no more trouble. Anna wrote regularly to Herbert, who promptly responded; his missives always being directed to one of Anna’s schoolmates, who was just romantic enough to think her companion _persecuted_! Gradually I was let into the secret, and was occasionally employed to carry Anna’s notes to and from the house of her friend. I did not then consider the great wrong I was doing, but since I have shed many a bitter tear to think that I in any way helped to work my sister’s ruin. CHAPTER III. COUSIN WILL. If so far as the golden Californian land this book of mine shall reach, it may, perchance, fall into the hands of some who, from their number, can select the veritable hero, the “Cousin Will” of my story. If so, I would ask them to think as leniently as possible of his faults, herein recorded, for the moustached Will of California, whose generous conduct wins the love of all, is hardly the same wild, mischievous boy, who once kept our home in a perpetual state of excitement.