e and his mother, and
his two sisters--Nicolacoa and Maria. Oh, how I should love to see them
again! I remember going to San Anlaccio with my father and an elder
sister, and staying there for two or three months. My father was buying
cattle for _tasajo_, and we lived with the Otano family. They were very
kind to as, and we three little girls used to ride together on the water
buffaloes, and one day their brother Jose, who I remember was a sailor,
had to come and search for us, for we were lost in a great swamp between
Punta de los Amantes and the stone cross of Padre Sanvitores."

"Those are the people," I said, feeling pleasurably excited myself that
we should have mutual friends. "I have often heard him speak of his
mother and two sisters. And often, very often he has urged me to pay
him a visit, and settle down with him. He says that I should not want to
leave the Marianas once I could see what a beautiful country it is."

"No, indeed! Ah, Mr. Sherry, 'tis indeed a beautiful country. I wonder
if I shall ever see it again! My father, two brothers, and three of my
sisters died of fever just before I married Krause, and there are but
two of us left now--myself and another sister who is married to the
Spanish doctor at San Ignacio de Agana. Oh, shall I ever see her face
again?"

Her eyes sparkled, and her pale face flushed as she bent towards me with
clasped hands: "Oh, the mere thought of it makes me feel a young girl
again."

"Why should you not?" I began, then I ceased speaking, and walked up and
down the room thinking, and I felt my cheeks flush as a project, daring
enough, came to my mind.

"Have you a big sheet chart of the Pacific--the large blue-backed one?"
I asked.

"Yes, there it is in the corner beside you, with some others. But it is
old."

"It will do."

I spread it out on the table, and weighted down each of the four ends by
means of books, so as to get a good view.

[Illustration: I spread the chart out on the table 092]

"Come here, Mrs. Krause, and look."

She came over to me, and then her thin little hand followed my
forefinger as I made a pencilled mark on the chart to the south-east.

"Here is Tarawa; here is Apia in Samoa, nearly fifteen hundred miles
distant. Here is the island of Ovalau in Fiji, about the same distance.
Do you see?"

"Yes, I see."

"And here, north-west from Tarawa, is your home on Guam--more than two
thousand miles away. 'Tis a long, long way--but it could be d