g-gown, wearing Mr.
Townsend's slippers, and sitting in Mr. Townsend's chair, beside Mr.
Townsend's wife, smoked Mr. Townsend's pipe with such an air of feeling
most thoroughly and comfortably at home!

"Yes, ma'am. I've been in California for the last six years. And before
that I went quite round the world in a whaling ship!"

"Good gracious!"

The stranger sent a puff of smoke curling gracefully over his head.

"It's very strange, my dear lady, how often you see one thing as you go
wandering about the world after that fashion."

"And what is that?"

"Men, without house or home above their heads, roving here and there,
and turning up in all sorts of odd places; caring very little for life
as a general thing, and making fortunes just to fling them away again,
and all for one reason. You don't ask me what _that_ is? No doubt you
know already very well."

"I think not, sir."

"Because a woman has jilted them!"

Here was a long pause, and Mr. Townsend's pipe emitted short puffs with
surprising rapidity. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and the
widow's cheek was dyed with blushes as she thought of the absent Sam.

"I wonder how women manage when _they_ get served in the same way," said
the stranger musingly; "you never meet _them_ roaming up and down in
that style."

"No," said Mrs. Townsend, with some spirit, "if a woman is in trouble
she must stay at home and bear it, the best way she can. And there's
more women bearing such things than we know of, I dare say."

"Like enough. We never know whose hand gets pinched in a trap unless
they scream. And women are too shy or too sensible--which you
choose--for that."

"Did you ever, in all your wanderings, meet any one by the name of
Samuel Payson?" asked the widow, unconcernedly.

The stranger looked toward her; she was rummaging the table-drawer for
her knitting work, and did not notice him. When it was found, and the
needles in motion, he answered her.

"Payson--Sam Payson? Why, he was my most intimate friend! Do you know
him?"

"A little--that is, I used to, when I was a girl. Where did you meet
him?"

"He went with me on the whaling voyage I told you of, and afterward to
California. We had a tent together, and some other fellows with us, and
we worked the same claim for more than six months."

"I suppose he was quite well?"

"Strong as an ox."

"And--and happy?" pursued the widow, bending closer over her knitting.

"Hum--the less said about