ade a deep excavation in the stern. She had found
many curious things,--the flotsam and jetsam of previous storms,--but as
yet, it is perhaps needless to say, not the treasure.

To-day she was filled with the vague hope of making her discovery before
Christmas Day. To have been able to take her father something on that
day--if only a few old coins--the fruit of her own unsuspected labor and
intuition--not the result of vulgar barter or menial wage--would have
been complete happiness. It was perhaps a somewhat visionary expectation
for an educated girl of eighteen, but I am writing of a young
Californian girl, who had lived in the fierce glamour of
treasure-hunting, and in whose sensitive individuality some of its
subtle poison had been instilled. Howbeit, to-day she found nothing.
She was sadly hiding her pick and shovel, as was her custom, when she
discovered the fresh track of an alien foot in the sand. Robinson Crusoe
was not more astounded at the savage footprint than Jenny Miller at this
damning proof of the invasion of her sacred territory. The footprints
came from and returned to the copse of shrubs. Some one might have seen
her at work!

But a singular change in the weather, overlooked in her excitement, here
forced itself upon her. A light film over sea and sky, lifted only by
fitful gusts of wind, seemed to have suddenly thickened until it became
an opaque vault, narrowing in circumference as the wind increased. The
promontory behind her disappeared, as if swallowed up, the distance
before her seemed to contract; the ocean at her side, the color of
dull pewter, vanished in a sheet of slanting rain, and by the time she
reached the house, half running, half carried along by the quartering
force of the wind, a full gale was blowing.

It blew all the evening, reaching a climax and fury at past midnight
that was remembered for many years along that coast. In the midst of it
they heard the booming of cannon, and then the voices of neighbors in
the road. "There was," said the voices, "a big steamer ashore just afore
the house." They dressed quickly and ran out.

Hugging the edge of the copse to breathe and evade the fury of the wind,
they struggled to the sands. At first, looking out to sea, the girl saw
nothing but foam. But, following the direction of a neighbor's arm, for
in that wild tumult man alone seemed speechless, she saw directly before
her, so close upon her that she could have thrown a pebble on board,