chair that almost swallowed her sat Alice, gazing dreamily into the embers.  Family portraits hung upon the wall, and one of these, stiff and haughty in the regimentals of a soldado de cuero, seemed to look down upon the domestic picture with a certain austere benignity.  This was the painting of Francisco Garvez of hidalgo lineage, who had stood beside Ortega, the Pathfinder, when that honored scout of Portola had found the bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate.

“Carissima, how he would have loved you, that old man!” Benito’s tone was dreamy.

Alice Windham turned.  “You are like him, Benito,” she said fondly.  “There is the same flash in your eye.  Come, sit for awhile by the fire.  It’s so cosy when it storms.”

Benito kissed her.  “I would that I might, but today there is an election in the city,” he reminded.  “I must go to vote.  Perhaps I can persuade the good Broderick to dine with us this evening; or Brannan—­though he is so busy nowadays.  Often I look about unconsciously for Nathan Spear.  It seems impossible that he is dead.”

“He was 47, but he seemed so young,” commented Alice.  She rose hastily.  “You must be very careful, dear,” she cautioned, with a swift anxiety, “of the cold and wet—­and of the hoodlums.  They tell me there are many.  Every week one reads in the Alta that So-and-So was killed at the Eldorado or the Verandah.  Never more than that.  In my home in the East they would call it murder.  There would be a great commotion; the assassin would be hanged.”

“Ah, yes; but this is a new country,” he said, a little lamely.

“Will there never be law in San Francisco?” Alice asked him, passionately.  “I have not forgotten—­how my father died.”

Benito’s face went suddenly white.  “Nor I,” he said, with an odd intensity; “there are several things ... that you may trust me ... to remember.”

“You mean,” she queried in alarm, “McTurpin?”

Benito’s mood changed.  “There, my dear.”  He put an arm about her shoulders soothingly.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll be careful; neither storm nor bullets shall harm me.  I will promise you that.”

* * * * *

Early as it was in the day’s calendar—­for San Francisco had no knack of rising with the sun—­Benito found the town awake, intensely active when he picked his way along the edge of those dangerous bogs that passed for business streets.  Several polling places had been established.  Toward each of them, lines of citizens converged in patient single-file detachments that stretched usually around the corner and the length of another block.  Official placards announced that all citizens of the United States were entitled to the ballot and beneath one of these, a wag had written with white chalk in a large and sprawling hand: 

“No Chinese Coolies in Disguise Need Apply.”

No one seemed to mind the rain, though a gale blew from the sea, causing a multitude of tents to sway and flap in dangerous fashion.  Now and then a canvas habitation broke its moorings and went racing down the hill, pursued by a disheveled and irate occupant, indulging in the most violent profanity.