“It isn’t signed,” Benito seemed a trifle puzzled.  Then he found, in back of Waters’ lines, a final sheet in a strange handwriting.  Hurriedly he rose, walked to the open door.  Below, upon the bay, storm was brewing; it seemed mirrored in his eyes.

“What is it, dear?” asked Alice following.  He handed her the single sheet of paper.

“Dead!” her tone was stunned, incredulous.

Benito’s arm around her, dumbly, they went out together.  Rain was beginning to fall, but neither knew it.

* * * * *

Several years of war made little change in San Francisco.  The city furnished more than its quota of troops.  The California Hundred, trained fighters and good horsemen, went to Massachusetts in 1862 and were assigned to the Second Cavalry.  Later the California Battalion joined them.  Both saw terrific fighting.

But California furnished better than “man-power” to the struggle.  Money, that all-important war-essential, streamed uninterruptedly from the coast-state mines to Washington.  More than a hundred millions had already been sent—­a sum which, in Confederate hands, might have turned the destiny of battle.  California was loyal politically as well.  Though badly treated by a remote, often unsympathetic government, she had scorned the plot to set up a “Pacific Republic” as the South had planned and hoped.

Her secret service men were busy and astute, preventing filibustering plots and mail robberies.  There was a constant feeling of uneasiness.  San Francisco still housed too many Southern folk.

Benito and Alice were dining with the Stanleys.  Francisco and Robert were squatted on the hearth, poring over an illustrated book that had come from New York.  It showed the uniforms of United States soldiers, the latest additions to the navy.

“See,” said Francisco, “here are pictures of Admiral Farragut and General Sherman.”  He was fifteen now and well above his father’s shoulders.  Robert, three years younger, looked up to admire his cousin.  A smaller, more intellectual type of boy was Robert, with his mother’s quiet sweetness and his father’s fire.

“Here’s a picture of the fight between the Monitor and Merrimac,” he cried interestedly, “When I grow up I shall join the navy and wear a cap with gold braid, like Farragut.”

“And I shall be a lawyer ... maybe a Senator or President,” said Francisco, with importance.

The men, talking politics over their cigars, did not hear this converse, but the women looked down at their sons, smiling fondly.  “Yesterday Robert announced that he would be a poet,” Alice confided.  “He saw his father writing verses in a book.”

“And tomorrow he will want to be an inventor or a steam-boat captain,” Inez answered. “’Tis the way with boys....  Mine is getting so big—­I’m afraid he’ll be going to war.”

Po Lun interrupted their further confidences.  He rushed in breathless, unannounced.  “Misstah Windham,” he spoke to Benito.  “One man wanchee see you quick in Chinatown....  He allee same plitty soon die.  He say you sabe him.  His name McTu’pin.”