“Let it go,” growled Thurstane.  “Let that pass.  I won’t talk of it—­nor of other things.  But,” and here he seemed to shake with emotion, “I want nothing more to do with you—­you nor your family.  I have had suffering enough.”

“Ah, it is with her that you quarrel rather than with me,” inferred Coronado impudently, for he had recovered his self-possession.  “Certainly, my poor Lieutenant!  You have reason.  But remember, so has she.  She is enormously rich and can have any one.  That is the way these women understand life.”

“You will oblige me by saying not another word on that subject,” broke in Thurstane savagely.  “I got her letter dismissing me, and I accepted my fate without a word, and I mean never to see her again.  I hope that satisfies you.”

“My dear Lieutenant,” protested Coronado, “you seem to intimate that I influenced her decision.  I beg you to believe, on my word of honor as a gentleman, that I never urged her in any way to write that letter.”

“Well—­no matter—­I don’t care,” replied the young fellow in a voice like one long sob.  “I don’t care whether you did or not.  The moment she could write it, no matter how or why, that was enough.  All I ask is to be left alone—­to hear no more of her.”

“I am obliged to speak to you of her,” said Coronado.  “She is aboard.”

“Aboard!” exclaimed Thurstane, and he made a step as if to reach the shore or to plunge into the sea.

“I am sorry for you,” said Coronado, with a simplicity which seemed like sincerity.  “I thought it my duty to warn you.”

“I cannot go back,” groaned the young fellow.  “I must go to San Diego.  I am under orders.”

“You must avoid her.  Go to bed late.  Get up early.  Keep out of her way.”

Turning his back, Thurstane walked away from this cruel and hated counsellor, not thinking at all of him however, but rather of the deep beneath, a refuge from trouble.

We must slip back to his last adventure with Texas Smith, and learn a little of what happened to him then and up to the present time.

It will be remembered how the bushwhacker sat in ambush; how, just as he was about to fire at his proposed victim, his horse whinnied; and how this whinny caused Thurstane’s mule to rear suddenly and violently.  The rearing saved the rider’s life, for the bullet which was meant for the man buried itself in the forehead of the beast, and in the darkness the assassin did not discover his error.  But so severe was the fall and so great Thurstane’s weakness that he lost his senses and did not come to himself until daybreak.