As the Keiths, on the way, drove across what is now Harbour View, they stopped to watch a bark standing out through the Golden Gate before the gentle morning land breeze. She made a pretty sight, for the new-risen sun whitened her sails. Aboard her was the arch-plotter, Morrell. Had they known of that fact, it is to be doubted whether they would have felt any great disappointment over his escape, or any deep animosity at all. The outcome of his efforts had been clarifying. The bark was bound for the Sandwich Islands. Morrell's dispositions for flight at a moment's notice had been made long since; in fact, since the first days of Vigilante activity. He lingered in the islands for some years, at first cutting quite a dash; then, as his money dwindled and his schemes failed, he degenerated slowly. His latter end was probably as a small copra trader in the South Seas; but that is unknown. Mrs. Morrell--if indeed she was the man's legal wife at all--thus frankly abandoned, put a bold front on the whole matter. She returned to her house. As the Keiths in no manner molested her, she took heart. With no resources other than heavily mortgaged real property, she found herself forced to do something for a living. In the course of events we see Mrs. Morrell keeping a flashy boarding-house, hanging precariously on the outer fringe of the lax society of the times, frowned upon by the respectable, but more or less sought by the fast men and young girls only too numerous among the idle of that day.

Ben Sansome went south. For twenty years he lived in Los Angeles, where he cut a figure, but from which he always cast longing eyes back upon San Francisco. He had a furtive lookout for arrivals from the north. One day, however, he came face to face with Keith. As the latter did not annihilate him on the spot, Sansome plucked up courage. He returned to San Francisco, There in time he attained a position dear to his heart; he became an "old beau," frequenting the teas and balls, appraising the debutantes, giving his opinion on vintage wines, leading a comfortable, idle, selfish, useless, graceful life. His only discomfort was his occasional encounters with the Keiths. Mrs. Keith never distinguished him from thin air unless others were present. Keith had always in his eye a gleam of contempt which, perhaps, Sansome acknowledged, was natural; but it was a contempt with a dash of amusement in it, and that galled. Still--Ben was satisfied. He gain............