sy as old shoes,
and people could espouse each other about as rapidly as they might want
to.

The consequence was that, although Ralph Thurstane and Clara Van Diemen
had only been two days in Monterey and had gone through no forms of
publication, they were actually being married when Coronado reached the
village church.

Leaning against the wall, with eyes as fixed and face as livid as if he
were a corpse from the neighboring cemetery, he silently witnessed a
ceremony which it would have been useless for him to interrupt, and then,
stepping softly out of a side door, lurked away.

He walked a quarter of a mile very fast, ran nearly another quarter of a
mile, turned into a by-road, sought its thickest underbrush, threw himself
on the ground, and growled. For once he had a heavier burden upon him than
he could bear in human presence, or bear quietly anywhere. He must be
alone; also he must weep and curse. He was in a state to tear his hair and
to beat his head against the earth. Refined as Coronado usually was,
admirably as he could imitate the tranquil gentleman of modern
civilization, he still had in him enough of the natural man to rave. For a
while he was as simple and as violent in his grief as ever was any
Celtiberian cave-dweller of the stone age.

Jealousy, disappointed love, disappointed greed, plans balked, labor lost,
perils incurred in vain! All the calamities that he could most dread
seemed to have fallen upon him together; he was like a man sucked by the
arms of a polypus, dying in one moment many deaths. We must, however, do
him the justice to believe that the wound which tore the sharpest was that
which lacerated his heart. At this time, when he realized that he had
altogether and forever lost Clara, he found that he loved her as he had
never yet believed himself capable of loving. Considering the nobility of
this passion, we must grant some sympathy to Coronado.

Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned to
the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative
and sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carcass
of all remaining hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation
which had so violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had
seemed to promise such great success, was over. Even if he could have
resolved to kill Clara, there was no longer anything to be gained by it,
for her money would not descend to Cor