to New York and claim the property. I examined the papers, found a
copy of the will by which Walcott inherited the property, a bundle
of correspondence, and sufficient documentary evidence to establish
his identity beyond the shadow of a doubt. Desperate gambler as I
now was, I quailed before the daring plan of Nina San Croix. I
urged that I, Richard Warren, would be known, that the attempted
fraud would be detected and would result in investigation, and
perhaps unearth the whole horrible matter.

"The woman pointed out how much I resembled Walcott, what vast
changes ten years of such life as we had led would naturally be
expected to make in men, how utterly impossible it would be to
trace back the fraud to Walcott's murder at Hell's Elbow, in the
wild passes of the Sierra Nevadas. She bade me remember that we
were both outcasts, both crime-branded, both enemies of man's law
and God's; that we had nothing to lose; we were both sunk to the
bottom. Then she laughed, and said that she had not found me a
coward until now, but that if I had turned chicken-hearted, that
was the end of it, of course. The result was, we sold the gold
dust and jewels in San Francisco, took on such evidences of
civilization as possible, and purchased passage to New York on the
best steamer we could find.

"I was growing to depend on the bold gambler spirit of this woman,
Nina San Croix; I felt the need of her strong, profligate nature.
She was of a queer breed and a queerer school. Her mother was the
daughter of a Spanish engineer, and had been stolen by the Mexican,
her father. She herself had been raised and educated as best might
be in one of the monasteries along the Rio Grande, and had there
grown to womanhood before her father, fleeing into the mountains of