she had a tragedy in her life, but she has. Aunt Louisa told me
the tale. It all happened long, long ago. Interesting things
like this all did happen long ago, it seems to me. They never
seem to happen now. This was in '49, when people were rushing to
the gold fields in California. It was just like a fever, Aunt
Louisa says. People took it, right here on the Island; and a
number of young men determined they would go to California.

"It is easy to go to California now; but it was a very different
matter then. There were no railroads across the land, as there
are now, and if you wanted to go to California you had to go in a
sailing vessel, all the way around Cape Horn. It was a long and
dangerous journey; and sometimes it took over six months. When
you got there you had no way of sending word home again except by
the same plan. It might be over a year before your people at
home heard a word about you--and fancy what their feelings would
be!

"But these young men didn't think of these things; they were led
on by a golden vision. They made all their arrangements, and
they chartered the brig _Fanny_ to take them to California.

"The captain of the _Fanny_ is the hero of my story. His name
was Alan Dunbar, and he was young and handsome. Heroes always
are, you know, but Aunt Louisa says he really was. And he was in
love--wildly in love,--with Margaret Grant. Margaret was as
beautiful as a dream, with soft blue eyes and clouds of golden
hair; and she loved Alan Dunbar just as much as he loved her.
But her parents were bitterly opposed to him, and they had
forbidden Margaret to see him or speak to him. They hadn't