In the tumult of conflicting thoughts that assailed me as we entered on the last stage of our journey, the idea of the perils that might lie ahead fixed my attention for the moment, and I began to feel alarm for the safety of my companion.

“Mrs. Knapp,” I said; “there is no need for you to take this journey. You had better stop in Oakland for the rest of the night.”

“I must go,” she replied.

“There is danger,” I argued. “You should not expose yourself to the chances of a brush with the enemy. It is a wet, cold ride, and there may be bullets flying at the end of it.”

Mrs. Knapp gave a shudder, but she spoke firmly.

“I could not rest—I could not stay away. It may be important that I should be there—it will be important if we find the boy. You do not know him. Mr. Nahl does not know him.”

“None of my men seems to know him,” I interrupted; “that is, if one may judge by the way they were all taken in on the boy you sent to Livermore.”

“I think none of them ever saw his face, though some of them were with Henry Wilton when he first took the boy, and afterward.”

“The enemy seem to know him,” said I, remembering the scene at Livermore.

“Terrill knows him. I think none of the other agents could be certain of his face, unless it is Mr. Meeker. But truly, I must go.”

“You are very brave,” I said, admiring her spirit, though I was loath to have the responsibility of her safety on my hands.

“Without you I should not dare to go, I fear,” she made answer, “I need a strong arm to lean on, you see.”

“You may wish later that you had chosen a cavalier with two strong arms to his equipment. I fear I shouldn't do so well in a hand-to-hand encounter as I should have done before I met Mr. Terrill last night.”

“Oh, I hope it will not come to that,” said Mrs. Knapp cheerfully, though there was a little tremor in her voice.

“What if they have seized the boy?”

Mrs. Knapp was silent for a little, as if this contingency had not entered her plans.

“We must follow him and save him, even if we have to raise the whole county to do it.” Her voice was firm and resolute.

“What would happen to the boy if he were taken?” I found courage to ask.

“He would not live a month,” she replied.

“Would he be murdered?”

“I don't know how the end would come. But I know he would die.”

I was in the shadow of the mystery. A hundred questions rose to my lips; but behind them all frowned the grim wolf-visage of Doddridge Knapp, and I could not find the courage that could make me speak to them.

“Mrs. Knapp,” I said, “you have called me by my name. I had almost forgotten that I had ever borne it. I have lived more in the last month than in the twenty-five years that I remember before it, and I have almost come to think that the old name belongs to some one else. May I ask how you got hold of it?”

“It was simple enough. Henry had told me about you. I remembered that you were coming from the same town he had come from. I telegraphed to an agent in Boston. He went up to your place, made his inquiries and telegraphed me. I suppose you will be pleased to know,” she continued with a droll affectation of malice in her voice, “that he mailed me your full history as gathered from the town pump. It is at the house now.”

“I trust it is nothing so very disreputable,” I said modestly, raking my memory hastily for any likely account of youthful escapades.

“There was one rather serious bit,” said Mrs. Knapp gravely. “There was an orchard—”

“There was more than one,” I admitted.

Mrs. Knapp broke into a laugh.

“I might have expected it. I knew the account was too good to be true. You'll have to get Luella's permission if you want to read the charges in full, though. She has taken possession of the document.”

Luella knew! At first I was disappointed, then relieved. Something of the promised explanation was taken off my mind.

“I tried to get something out of Mother Borton concerning you,” continued Mrs. Knapp. “I even went so far as to see her once.”

“I don't think you got any more out of her than she wanted to tell.”

“Indeed I did not. I was afraid Mr. Richmond had not gone about it the right way. You know Mr. Richmond acted as my agent with her?”

“No, I didn't know. She was as close-mouthed with me as with you, I think.”

“Well, I saw her. I wanted to get what information she had of you and of Henry.”

“She had a good deal of it, if she wanted to give it up.”

“So I supposed. But she was too clever for me. She spoke well of you, but not a word could I get from her about Henry. Yet she gave me the idea that she knew much.”

“I should think she might. I had told her the whole story.”

“She is a strange woman.”

“She was able to hold her tongue.”

“A strange gift, you mean to say, I suppose,” laughed Mrs. Knapp.

“She was quite as successful in concealing from me the fact that she had ever had word with you, though I suspected that she knew more than she told.”

“She is used to keeping secrets, I suppose,” replied Mrs. Knapp. “But I must reward her well for what she has done.”

“She is beyond fear or reward.”

“Dead?” cried Mrs. Knapp in a shocked voice. “And how?”

“She died, I fear, because she befriended me.” And then I told her the story of Mother Borton's end.

“Poor creature!” said Mrs. Knapp sadly. “Yet perhaps it is better so. She has died in doing a good act.”

“She was a good friend to me,” I said. “I should have been in the morgue before her, I fear, but for her good will.”

Mrs. Knapp was silent for a minute.

“I hope we are at the end of the tale of death,” she said at last. “It is dreadful that insane greed and malice should spread their evil so far about. Two lives have been sacrificed already, and perhaps it is only the beginning. Yet I believe—I am sure—I have done right.”

“I am sure of that,” I said, and then was silent as her words called up the image of the Wolf, dark, forbidding, glowing with the fires of hate—the Wolf of the lantern-flash in the alley and the dens of Chinatown—and the mystery seemed deeper than ever. The carriage had been rolling along swiftly. Despite the rain the streets were smooth and hard, and we made rapid progress. We had crossed a bridge, and with many turns made a course toward the southeast. Now the ground became softer, and progress was slow. An interminable array of trees lined the way on both sides, and to my impatient imagination stretched for miles before us. Then the road became better, and the horses trotted briskly forward again, their hoofs pattering dully on the softened ground.

“All the better,” I thought. “It's as good as a muffler if any one is listening for us.”

“Here's the place,” came the voice of Dicky, giving directions to the driver; and the carriage slackened pace and stopped. Looking out I saw that we were at a division of the road where a two-story house faced both of the branching ways.

“You'd better come out,” said Dicky at the door, addressing his remark to me. “He was to meet us here.”

“Be careful,” cautioned Mrs. Knapp.

The night had turned colder, or I was chilled by the inaction of the ride. The sky was clearing, and stars were to be seen. By the outline of the hills we had made to the south. The horses steamed and breathed heavily in the keen air.

I kept my hand on the revolver that lay in my overcoat pocket, and walked with Dicky on to the porch. It was a common roadside saloon, and at this hour it appeared wholly deserted. Even the dog, without which I knew no roadside saloon could exist, was as silent as its owners.

“Here's a go!” said Dicky. “He was to meet us, sure. What time have you got?”

I struck a match in a corner and looked at my watch by its flare.

“Five minutes to three.”

“Whew!” he whispered, “we're regularly done. I thought he had a bad eye when I was bargaining with him.”

I wondered if Dicky had a hand in the trick, if trick it should prove to be.

“He may be up stairs,” I suggested.

Dicky groaned. “It's like advertising with a band wagon to rout 'em out at this time of the night,” he whispered.

“The enemy have been along here ahead of us,” I said. “They may have picked him up.”

“That's like enough,” said Dicky ruefully. “But if they've got him, we might as well take the back tracks for town and hunt up a sheriff or two, or send for the boys to come over.”

“It's too late to do that,” said I decidedly. “We must go on at once.”

“Well,” said Dicky dubiously, “I think I know where the fellow would have taken us. I trailed him this afternoon, and I'll lay two to one that I can pick out the right road.”

“Is this the third road from Brooklyn?” I asked pointing to the track that led to the left.

“I reckon so,” said Dicky. “I haven't kept count, but I recollect only two before it.”

“All right. Up with you then!”

Dicky obediently mounted to the seat beside the driver.

“I shall ride outside,” I said to Mrs. Knapp. “I may be needed.”

“I suppose you are right,” she replied with somewhat of protest in her voice, and I closed the door, and climbed up. It was close quarters for three, but at the word the horses, refreshed by the brief rest, rolled the carriage up the road that led to the hills.

Half a mile farther we passed a house, and within a quarter of a mile another.

“We are on the right road,” was my thought as I compared these in my mind with the crosses on the diagram.

About half a mile farther, a small cluster of buildings loomed up, dark and obscure, by the roadside.

“This is the place,” I said confidently, motioning the driver to pull up. I remembered that Henry Wilton's map had stopped at the third cross from the parting of the roads.

“No, it isn't,” said Dicky eagerly. “It's two or three miles farther on. I trailed the fellow myself to the next house, and that's a good two miles at least.”

I had leaped to the ground, and opened the door of the carriage.

“We are at the fourth place,” I said.

“And the cockeyed barn?” inquired Mrs. Knapp, peering out.

I was struck silent by this, and looked blankly at the dark forbidding structure that fronted on the road.

“You're right,” said Mrs. Knapp with a laugh. “Can't you make out that funny little window at the end there?”

I looked more closely at the building. In the dim light of the stars, the coat of whitewash that covered it made it possible to trace the outlines of a window in the gable that fronted the road. Some freak of the builder had turned it a quarter of the way around, giving it a comical suggestion of a man with a droop to his eye.

“And the iron cow?” I asked.

“Stupid! a pump, of course,” replied Mrs. Knapp with another laugh. “Now see if there is a lane here by the barn.”

A narrow roadway, just wide enough for a single wagon, joined the main road at the corner of the building.

“Then drive up it quietly,” was Mrs. Knapp's direction.

Just beyond the barn I made out the figure of the pump in a conspicuous place by the roadside, and felt more confident that we were on the right road.

The lane was now wrapped in Egyptian darkness. Trees lined both sides of the narrow way. Their branches brushed our faces as we passed, and their tops seemed to meet above us till even the faint light of the stars scarcely glimmered through. The hoofs of the horses splashed in the mud, and the rather clumsy carriage dragged heavily and slowly forward.

“I'd give five dollars to light my lamps,” growled the driver. We were traveling by the instinct of the horses.

“If your life is worth more than five dollars, you'd better keep them dark,” I said.

The driver swore in an undertone as the hack lurched and groaned in a boggy series of ruts, and a branch whipped him in the face. I was forced to give a grunt myself, as another slapped my sore arm and sent a sharp twinge of pain shooting from the wound till it tingled in my toes. Dicky, protected between us, chuckled softly. I reflected savagely that nothing spoils a man for company like a mistaken sense of humor.

Suddenly the horses stopped so short that we were almost pitched out.

“Hello! what's this?” I cried, drawing my revolver, fearful of an ambush.

“It's a fence,” said the driver.

“There must be a gate,” I said, jumping down quickly.

Mrs. Knapp rapped on the carriage door and I opened it.

“Have you come to the bars?” she asked presently.

“I guess so. We've come against something like a fence.”

“Well, then,” she replied, “when we get through, take the road to the left. That will bring us to the house.”

“You are certain?”

“That is what Henry wrote in the cipher beneath the map. The house must be only a few hundred yards away.”

The bars were there, and I lifted the wet and soggy boards with an anxious heart. Were we, after all, so near the hiding-place? And what were we to find?

I mounted the seat again, and we drove forward. The road was scarcely distinguishable, but the horses followed it without hesitation as it led behind a tall hedge and among scattered oaks.

My heart beat fast. What if the enemy were before us?

“Have you got your revolver handy?” I whispered to Dicky.

“Two of 'em,” he chuckled. “There's a double dose for the man that wants it.”

On a sudden turn the house loomed up before us, and a wild clamor of dogs broke the stillness of the night.

“I hope they are tied,” I said, with a poor attempt to conceal my misgivings.

“We'll have a lively time in a quarter of a minute if they aren't,” laughed Dicky, as he followed me.

But the baying and barking came no nearer, and I helped Mrs. Knapp out of the carriage. She looked at the house closely.

“This is the place,” she said, in an unmistakable tone of decision. “We must be quick. I wish something would quiet those dogs; they will bring the whole country out.”

It seemed an hour before we could raise any one, but it may not have been three minutes before a voice came from behind the door.

“Who's there?”

“It is L. M. K.,” said Mrs. Knapp; then she added three words of gibberish that I took to be the passwords used to identify the friends of the boy.

At the words there was the sound of bolts shooting back, and the heavy door opened enough to admit us. As we passed in, it was closed once more and the bolts shot home.

Before us stood a short, heavy-set man, holding a candle. His face, which was stamped with much of the bulldog look in it, was smooth-shaven except for a bristling brown mustache. He looked inquiringly at us.

“Is he here—the boy?” cried Mrs. Knapp, her voice choked with anxiety. “Yes,” said the man. “Do we move again?” He seemed to feel no surprise at the situation, and I inferred that it was not the first time he had changed quarters on a sudden at the darkest hour of the night.

“At once,” said Mrs. Knapp, in her tone of decision.

“It will take ten minutes to get ready,” said the man. “Come this way.”

I was left standing alone by the door in the darkness, with a burden lifted from my mind. We had come in time. The single slip of paper left by Henry Wilton had been the means, through a strange combination of events, to point the way to the unknown hiding-place of the boy. He was still safe, and the enemy were on a false trail. I should not have to reproach myself with the sacrifice of the child.

Yet my mind was far from easy. The enemy might have been misled, but if they had followed the road marked out in the diagram I had brought from their den, they were too close for comfort. I listened for any sound from the outside. The dogs had quieted down. Twice I thought I heard hoof-beats, and there was a chorus of barks from the rear of the house. But it was only the horses that had brought us hither, stamping impatiently as they waited.

In a few minutes the wavering light of the candle reappeared. Mrs. Knapp was carrying a bundle that I took to be the boy, and the man brought a valise and a blanket.

“It's all right,” said Mrs. Knapp. “No—I can carry him—I want to carry him.”

The man opened the door, then closed and locked it as I helped Mrs. Knapp into the carriage.

“Have you got him safe?” asked Dicky incredulously. “Well, I'll have to say that you know more than I thought you did.” And the relief and satisfaction in his tone were so evident that I gladly repented of my suspicions of the light-hearted Dicky.

“Have you heard anything?” I asked him anxiously.

“I thought I heard a yell over here through the woods. We had better get out of here.”

“Don't wait a second,” said the man. “The south road comes over this other way. If you've heard anybody there, they will be here in five minutes. I'll follow you on a horse.”

With an injunction to haste, I stepped after Mrs. Knapp into the carriage, the door was shut, Dicky mounted the seat, and we rolled down the road on the return journey.

“Oh, how thankful I am!” cried Mrs. Knapp. “There is a weight of anxiety off my mind. Can you imagine what I have been fearing in the last month?”

“I had thought a little about that myself,” I confessed. “But we are not yet out of the woods, I am afraid.”

“Hark! what's that?” said Mrs. Knapp apprehensively.

The carriage was now making its way through the bad stretch in the lane, and there was little noise in its progress.

“I heard nothing,” I said, putting down the window to listen. “What was it?”

“I thought it was a shout.”

There was no noise but the steady splash of horses' hoofs in the mud, and the sloppy, shearing sound of the wheels as they cut through the wet soil.

As we bumped and groaned again through the ruts, however, there arose in the distance behind us the fierce barking of dogs, their voices raised in anger and alarm.

There was a faint halloo, and a wilder barking followed. Then my ear caught the splashing of galloping hoofs behind, and in a moment the man of the house rode beside us.

“They've come,” he said, “or, anyhow, somebody's come. I let the dogs loose, and they will have a lively time for a while.”

At his words there was another chorus of barks and shouts. Then a shot rang out, and a fusillade followed with a mournful wail that died away into silence.

“Good Lord! they've shot the dogs,” cried the man hotly. “I've a mind to go back and pepper some of 'em.”

“No,” said Mrs. Knapp, “we may need you. Let us hurry!”

A few yards more brought us to the main road, and once on the firm ground the horses trotted briskly forward, while the horseman dropped behind, the better to observe and give the alarm.

“We were just in time,” said Mrs. Knapp, trembling.

“Let us be thankful for so much,” said I cheerfully.

“They will follow us,” said Mrs. Knapp, with conviction in her tone.

“Not before they have broken into the house. That will keep them for some time, I think.”

“Is there no sign of pursuit?”

I leaned out of the window. Only the deadened sound of the hoofs of our own horses, the deadened roll of our own carriage wheels, were audible in the stillness of the night. Then I thought I heard yells and faint hoof-beats in the distance, but again there was silence except for the muffled noise we made in our progress.

“Can't we drive faster?” asked Mrs. Knapp, when I made my report.

“I wouldn't spoil these horses for five hundred dollars,” growled the driver when I passed him the injunction to hasten.

“It's a thousand dollars for you if you get to the wharf ahead of the others,” cried Mrs. Knapp.

“And you'll have a bullet in your hide if you don't keep out of gunshot of them,” I added.

The double inducement to haste had its effect, and we could feel the swifter motion of the vehicle under us, and see the more rapid passage of the trees and fences that lined the way.

The wild ride appeared to last for ages. The fast trot of the horses was a funeral pace to the flight of my excited and anxious imagination. What if we should be overtaken? The hack would offer no protection from bullets, and Mrs. Knapp and the boy could scarcely escape injury if it came to a close encounter. But whenever I looked back there was only the single horseman galloping behind us, and the only sound to be heard was that of our own progress.

At last the houses began to pass more frequently. Now the road was broken by cross streets. Gas-lamps appeared, flickering faint and yellow in the morning air, as though the long night vigil had robbed them of their vitality. We were once more within city limits, and I felt a loosening of the tense nerves of anxiety. The panting horses never slackened pace. We swept over a long bridge, and plunged down a shaded street, and the figure of the horseman was the only sign of life behind us. Of a sudden there sounded a long roll, as of a great drum beating the reveille for an army of giants. The horseman quickened his pace and galloped furiously beside us.

“They're crossing the bridge,” he shouted.

“Whip up!” I cried to the driver. “They are only four blocks behind us.”

“Are they in sight?” asked Mrs. Knapp.

“I can not see them,” I replied, “and it may not be the ones we fear. It is near daybreak, and we are not the only ones astir.”

I peered out, but a rising mist from the lagoon and the bay hindered the vision, and the sound of the rolling drum had ceased.

The hack swung around a few corners, and then halted.

“Here we are!” cried Dicky Nahl at the door. “You get aboard the tug and push off. Jake and I will run up to the foot of the wharf. If they come, we can keep 'em off long enough for you to get aboard.” Dicky had a revolver in each hand, and the determined ring of his voice, so different from his usual light bantering tone, gave me assurance of his sincerity. With the horseman he hastened to the entrance of the wharf, where the two loomed through the mist like shadow-men.

The tug was where it lay when we left, and at my hail the captain and his crew of three were astir. It was a moment's work to get Mrs. Knapp and her charge aboard.

“Come on!” I cried to Dicky and his companion. And as the lines were cast off they made a running jump on to the deck of the tug boat, and the vessel backed out into the stream.

As the wharf faded away into the mist that hung over the waters I thought I saw shapes of men and horses rushing frantically to the edge, and a massive figure waving its arms like a madman, and shouting impotent curses into the air. But with the distance, the uncertain light, and the curtain of mist that was thickening between us, my eyes might have deceived me, and I omitted to mention my suspicions to Mrs. Knapp.

When the mist and darkness had blotted out shore, wharves and shipping, the tug moved at half-speed down the channel. I persuaded the captain that there was no need to sound the whistle, but he declined gruffly to increase his speed.

“I might as well be shot as run my boat ashore,” he growled, with a few emphatic seamanlike adjectives that appeared to belong to nothing in particular. “And any one that doesn't like my way of running a boat can get out and walk.”

I did not know of any particular reason for arguing the question, so I joined Mrs. Knapp.

“Thank God, we are safe!” she said, with a sigh of relief.

“We shall be in the city in half an hour, if that is safety,” I said.

“It will be safety for a few days. Then we can devise a new plan. I have a strong arm to lean on again.”

“I think if you would tell me who the boy is, and why the danger threatens him, I might help you more wisely.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Mrs. Knapp thoughtfully. “You shall know before it is necessary to make our next plans.”

And then the boy called for her attention and I returned to the deck.

The light of the morning was growing. Vessels were moving. The whistles of the ferry-boats, as they gave warning of their way through the mist, rose shrill on the air. The waters were still, a faint ripple showing in strange contrast to the scene of last night.

“There's a steamer behind us,” said Dicky Nahl, with a worried look as I joined him. “I've been listening to it for five minutes.”

“It's a tug,” said the captain. “She was lying on the other side of the wharf last night.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Put on full steam, then, or we shall be run down in the bay. It's the gang we are trying to get away from.”

The captain looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and was inclined to resent my interference. Then he shrugged his shoulders as though it was none of his business whether we were lunatics or not so long as we paid for the privilege, and rang the engine bell for full speed ahead.

We had just come out of the Oakland Creek channel and the mist suddenly thinned before us. It left the bay and the city fair and wholesome in the gray light, as though the storm had washed the grime and foulness from air and earth and renewed the freshness of life. The clear outline of the hills was scarcely broken by smoke. The ever-changing beauties of the most beautiful of bays took on the faint suggestion of a livelier tint, the herald of the coming sun. We had come but a few hundred yards into the clear air when out of the mist bank behind us shot another tug, the smoke streaming from the funnel, the steam puffing noisily from the escapes and the engine straining to increase the speed.

At the exclamation that broke from us, our captain for the first time showed interest in the speed of his boat, and whistled angrily down to his engineer.

“We can beat her” he said, with a contemptuous accent on the “her.”

“That's your business,” I returned, and walked aft to where Mrs. Knapp was standing, half-way up the steps from the cabin.

“There is Darby Meeker,” I said, getting sight of him on the pursuing tug.

“Can they catch us?” inquired Mrs. Knapp, the lines tightening about her mouth.

“I think not—the captain says not. I should say that we were holding our own now.”

At this moment a tall, massive figure stepped from the pilot-house of the pursuing tug and shook its fists at us. At the sight of the man my heart stood still. The huge bulk, the wolf-face, just distinguishable, distorted, dark with rage and passion, stopped the blood, and I felt a faintness as of dropping from a height. With a gasp, life and voice came back to me.

“Doddridge Knapp!” I cried.

Mrs. Knapp looked at me in alarm, and grasped the rail.

“No! no!” she exclaimed. “A thousand times no! That is Elijah Lane!”

I gazed at her in wonder. Not Doddridge Knapp! Had my eyes played me false?

“Do you not understand?” she said in a low, intense tone. “He is Elijah Lane, the father of the boy. An evil, wicked man—mad—truly mad. He would kill the boy. He killed the mother of the boy. I know, but it is not a case for proof—not a case that the law can touch. And he hates the boy—and me!”

I began to grasp the truth, and recovered speech.

“But why does he want to kill him? And would not the law punish the crime?”

“You do not understand. The boy inherits a great fortune from his mother. Mr. Knapp and I are left trustees by the mother's will. If he had control of the boy, the boy would die; but it would be from cruelty, disease, neglect. It would not be murder in the eye of the law. But I know what would happen. Oh, see the wretch! How he hates me!”

I was stunned with the words I had heard. They made much plain that had puzzled me, yet they left much more in darkness; and I looked blankly at the figure on the other tug. It was truly a strange sight. The man was beside himself with rage, shouting, gesticulating and leaping about the deck in transports of passion. He showed every mark of a maniac.

Suddenly he drew a revolver and sent shot after shot in our direction. We were far beyond the reach of a pistol bullet, but Mrs. Knapp screamed and dodged.

“How he hates me!” she cried again.

When the last shot was gone from his revolver the man flung the weapon in frenzy, as though he could hope to strike us thus.

Then a strange thing happened. Whether due to the effort he had made in the throw, or to a lurch of the tug in the waves we left behind us, or to a stumble over some obstruction, I could not say. But we saw the man suddenly pitch forward over the low bulwarks of the tug into the waters of the bay.

Mrs. Knapp gave a scream and covered her eyes.

“Stop the boat!” I shouted. “Back her!”

The other tug had checked its headway at the same time, and there was a line of six or seven men along its side.

“There he is!” cried one.

The captain laid our tug across the tidal stream that swept us strongly toward Goat Island. Then he steamed slowly toward the other tug.

“He's gone,” said Dicky.

The other tug seemed anxious to keep away from us, as in distrust of our good intentions. I scanned the waters carefully, but the drowning man had gone down.

Then, rising not twenty feet away, floating for a moment on the surface of the water, I saw plainly for the first time, the very caricature of the face of Doddridge Knapp. The strong wolf-features which in the King of the Street were eloquent of power, intellect and sagacity, were here marked with the record of passion, hatred and evil life. I marveled now that I had ever traced a likeness between them.

“Give me that hook!” I cried, leaning over the side of the tug. “Go ahead a little.”

One of the men threw a rope. It passed too far, and drifted swiftly behind.

I made a wild reach with the hook, but it was too short. Just as I thought I should succeed, the face gave a convulsive twitch, as if in a parting outburst of hate and wrath, and the body sank out of sight. We waited for a few minutes, but there was no further sign. The other tug that had hovered near us turned about and made for the Oakland shore. I signed to the captain to take his course for the city.

The men talked in subdued tones, and I stood half-bewildered, with a bursting sense of relief, by Mrs. Knapp. At last she took her hands from before her eyes, and the first rays of the sun that cleared the tops of the Alameda Hills touched her calm, solemn, hopeful face.

“A new day has dawned,” she said. “Let us give thanks to God.”