staggering down the street, singing and laughing.

The next that was known of him was in a low drinking-place,
where he was seen lying on the floor, dead drunk; and from that
day he sank lower and lower, till one of the commonest sights to
be seen in Santa Barbara was Angus Phail reeling about, tipsy,
coarse, loud, profane, dangerous.

"See what the Senorita escaped!" said the thoughtless. "She was
quite right not to have married such. a drunken wretch."

In the rare intervals when he was partially sober, he sold all he
possessed,-- ship after ship sold for a song, and the proceeds
squandered in drinking or worse. He never had a sight of his lost
bride. He did not seek it; and she, terrified, took every precaution
to avoid it, and soon returned with her husband to Monterey,

Finally Angus disappeared, and after a time the news came up
from Los Angeles that he was there, had gone out to the San
Gabriel Mission, and was living with the Indians. Some years later
came the still more surprising news that he had married a squaw,--
a squaw with several Indian children, -- had been legally married
by the priest in the San Gabriel Mission Church. And that was the
last that the faithless Ramona Gonzaga ever heard of her lover,
until twenty-five years after her marriage, when one day he
suddenly appeared in her presence. How he had gained admittance
to the house was never known; but there he stood before her,
bearing in his arms a beautiful babe, asleep. Drawing himself up to
the utmost of his six feet of height, and looking at her sternly, with
eyes blue like steel, he said: "Senora Ortegna, you once did me a