boat was capsized. There, now, don't be alarmed! he wasn't drowned, as
Patterson can swear to--no, catch HIM! not a hair of him was hurt; but
I--I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico, alone, without a
cent to bless me. For true as you live, that hound of a captain, when he
found, as he thought, that Spencer was nabbed, he just confiscated all
his trunks and valuables and left me in the lurch. If I hadn't met a man
down there that offered to marry me and brought me here, I might have
died there, I reckon. But I did, and here I am. I went down there as
your husband's sweetheart, I've come back as the wife of an honest man,
and I reckon it's about square!"

There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied,
so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral
unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her
resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face
of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchres of his memory
and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.

"You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Capting Baxter--ez used
to be French Inez of New Orleans--hez told ye. Ye kin take everything
she's unloaded. And it's only doin' the square thing to her to say, she
hain't done it out o' no cussedness, but just to satisfy herself, now
she's a married woman and past such foolishness. But that ain't neither
here nor there. The gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was
at the tienda the day after she sailed and after his boat capsized." He
then gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unnecessary but
truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the particulars already known
that the following week he visited the Summit House and was surprised
to find that Spencer had never been there, nor had he ever sailed from
Monterey.