lonely waste; his duties were as mechanical as the instrument he worked,
and interruption of them would be instantly known at San Francisco. For
this he would receive his board and lodging and seventy-five dollars a
month,--a sum to be ridiculed in those "flush days," but which seemed to
the broken-spirited and half-famished stowaway a princely independence.

And then there was rest and security! He was free from that torturing
anxiety and fear of detection which had haunted him night and day for
three months. The ceaseless vigilance and watchful dread he had known
since his escape, he could lay aside now. The rude cabin on the sand
dune was to him as the long-sought cave to some hunted animal. It seemed
impossible that any one would seek him there. He was spared alike the
contact of his enemies or the shame of recognizing even a friendly face,
until by each he would be forgotten. From his coign of vantage on that
desolate waste, and with the aid of his telescope, no stranger could
approach within two or three miles of his cabin without undergoing his
scrutiny. And at the worst, if he was pursued here, before him was the
trackless shore and the boundless sea!

And at times there was a certain satisfaction in watching, unseen and in
perfect security, the decks of passing ships. With the aid of his glass
he could mingle again with the world from which he was debarred, and
gloomily wonder who among those passengers knew their solitary watcher,
or had heard of his deeds; it might have made him gloomier had he known
that in those eager faces turned towards the golden haven there was
little thought of anything but themselves. He tried to read in faces on
board the few outgoing ships the record of their success with a strange
envy. They were returning home! HOME! For sometimes--but seldom--he
thought of his own home and his past. It was a miserable past of forgery
and embezzlement that had culminated a career of youthful dissipation