Fran‡ois Ribaut, walking the deck of the steamer, gazes on the great white stars above him. The old man is peaceful, and calmly thankful. The night breezes moan over the lonely Atlantic! As the steamer bravely dashes the spray aside, his heart bounds with a new happiness. Every hour brings the beloved France nearer to him. Looking back at the life and land he leaves behind him, the old priest marvels at the utter uselessness of Philip Hardin's life. Apples of Sodom were all his treasures. His wasted gifts, his dark schemes, his sly plans, all gone for naught. Blindly driven along in the darkness of evil, his own hand pulled down his palace of sin on his head. And even "French Charlie" was avenged by the murderer's self-executed sentence. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay." The innocent and helpless have wandered past each dark pitfall dug by the wily Hardin, and enjoy their own. PŠre Fran‡ois, with his eyes cast backward on his own life path, feels that he has not fought the good fight in vain. His gentle heart throbs in sympathy, filled with an infinite compassion for the lonely Natalie de Santos. Sinned against and sinning. A free lance, with only her love for her child to hallow and redeem her. Her own plans, founded in guile, have all miscarried. Blood stains the gold bestowed on her by Philip Hardin's death. Her life has been a stormy sea. Yet, to her innocent child, a name and fortune have been given by the hand of Providence. In turning away her face from the vain and glittering world she has adorned, the chase and plaything of men, one pure white flower will bloom from the red ashes of her dead life. The unshaken affection of the child for whom she struggled, who can always, in ignorance of the dark past, lift happy eyes to hers and call her in love, by the holy name of mother. With bowed head and thankful heart, Padre Francisco's thoughts linger around beautiful Lagunitas. Its groves and forest arches, its mirrored lake, its smiling beauties and fruitful fields, return to him. The old priest murmurs: "God made Lagunitas; but man made California what it has been." A land of wild adventure, of unrighted wrongs. A land of sad histories, of many shattered hopes. Fierce waves of adventurers swept away the simple early folk. Lawless license, flaunting vice, and social disorganization made its early life as a State, one mad chaos. The Indians have perished, rudely despoiled. The old Dons have faded into the gray mists of a dead past. The early Argonauts have lived out the fierce fever of their wild lives. To the old individual freebooters, a new order of great corporate monopolies and gigantic rough-hewn millionaires succeeds. There is always some hand on the people's throat in California. Yet the star of hope glitters. Slowly, through all the foamy restless waves of transient adventurers the work of the homebuilders is showing the dry land decked with the olive branches of peace.