gold into
negotiable bank deposits or money, would require time, prudence, and even
diplomacy. He had already sold in the City of Mexico as much of the gold
from his trunk as he could offer without giving rise to too many
questions, and if he had not been known as a California trader, he might
have found some difficulties even in that comparatively small
transaction.

The captain had written that to do all he had to do he would be obliged
to remain in Acapulco or the City of Mexico--how long he could not tell,
for much of the treasure might have to be shipped to the United States,
and his plans for all this business were not yet arranged.

Before this letter had been received, Mrs. Cliff had believed it to be
undesirable to remain longer in San Francisco, and had gone to her home
in a little town in Maine. With Edna and Ralph, she had waited and waited
and waited, but at last had decided that Captain Horn was dead. In her
mind, she had allowed him all the time that she thought was necessary to
go to the caves, get gold, and come to San Francisco, and as that time
had long elapsed, she had finally given him up as lost. She knew the
captain was a brave man and an able sailor, but the adventure he had
undertaken was strange and full of unknown perils, and if it should so
happen that she should hear that he had gone to the bottom in a small
boat overloaded with gold, she would not have been at all surprised.

Of course, she said nothing of these suspicions to Edna or Ralph, nor did
she intend ever to mention them to any one. If Edna, who in so strange a
way had been made a wife, should, in some manner perhaps equally
extraordinary, be made a widow, she would come back to her, she would do
everything she could to comfort her; but now she did not seem to be
needed in San Francisco, and her New England home called to her through
the many voices of her friends. As to the business which had taken Mrs.
Cliff to South America, that must now be postponed, but it could not but
be a satisfaction to her that she was going back with perhaps as much
money as she would have had if her affairs in Valparaiso had been
satisfactorily settled.

Edna and Ralph had come to be looked upon at the Palmetto Hotel as
persons of distinction. They lived quietly, but they lived well, and
their payments were always prompt. They were the wife and brother-in-law
of Captain Philip Horn, who was known to be a successful man, and who
might be a rich one.