There he was, once more abandoned to the desert, but rich in a full haversack and a dead mule.  Having breakfasted, and thereby given head and hand a little strength, he set to work to provide for the future by cutting slices from the carcass and spreading them out to dry, well knowing that this land of desolation could furnish neither wolf nor bird of prey to rob his larder.  This work done, he pushed on at his best speed, found and fed his companions, and led them back to the mule, their storehouse.  After a day of rest and feasting came a march to the Cactus Pass, where the three were presently picked up by a caravan bound to Santa Fe, which carried them on for a number of days until they met a train of emigrants going west.  Thus it was that Glover reached California, and Thurstane and Sweeny Fort Yuma.

Once in quiet, the young fellow broke down, and for weeks was too sick to write to Clara, or to any one.  As soon as he could sit up he sent off letter after letter, but after two months of anxious suspense no answer had come, and he began to fear that she had never reached San Francisco.  At last, when he was half sick again with worrying, arrived a horrible epistle in Clara’s hand and signed by her name, informing him of her monstrous windfall of wealth and terminating the engagement.  The crudest thing in this cruel forgery was the sentence, “Do you not think that in paying courtship to me in the desert you took unfair advantage of my loneliness?”

She had trampled on his heart and flouted his honor; and while he writhed with grief he writhed also with rage.  He could not understand it; so different from what she had seemed; so unworthy of what he had believed her to be!  Well, her head had been turned by riches; it was just like a woman; they were all thus.  Thus said Thurstane, a fellow as ignorant of the female kind as any man in the army, and scarcely less ignorant than the average man of the navy.  He declared to himself that he would never have anything more to do with her, nor with any of her false sex.  At twenty-three he turned woman-hater, just as Mrs. Stanley at forty-five had turned man-hater, and perhaps for much the same sort of reason.

Shortly after Thurstane had received what he called his cashiering, his company was ordered from Fort Yuma to San Francisco.  It had garrisoned the Alcatraz fort only two days, and he had not yet had a chance to visit the city, when he was sent on this expedition to San Diego to hunt down a deserting quartermaster-sergeant.  The result was that he found himself shipped for a three days’ voyage with the woman who had made him first the happiest man in the army and then the most miserable.

How should he endure it?  He would not see her; the truth is that he could not endure the trial; but what he said to himself was that he would not.  In the darkness tears forced their way out of his eyes and mingled with the spray which the wind was already flinging over the bows.  Crying!  Three months ago, if any man had told him that he was capable of it, he would have considered himself insulted and would have felt like fighting.  Now he was not even ashamed of it, and would hardly have been ashamed if it had been daylight.  He was so thoroughly and hopelessly miserable that he did not care what figure he cut.