eful to avoid all mention of the gold mound,
but this omission in her narrative proved to be a defect which she had
not anticipated. As she had told that she had lost everything except a
few effects she had carried with her from the _Castor_, it was natural
enough that people should want to know how she had been enabled to come
home in such good fashion.

They had expected her to return in a shabby, or even needy, condition,
and now they had stories of delightful weeks at a hotel in San Francisco,
and beheld their poor shipwrecked neighbor dressed more handsomely than
they had ever seen her, and with a new trunk standing in the lower hall
which must contain something.

Mrs. Cliff began by telling the truth, and from this course she did not
intend to depart. She said that the captain of the _Castor_ was a just
and generous man, and, as far as was in his power, he had reimbursed the
unfortunate passengers for their losses. But as every one knows the
richest steamship companies are seldom so generous to persons who may be
cast away during transportation as to offer them long sojourns at hotels,
with private parlors and private servants, and to send them home in
drawing-room cars, with cloaks trimmed with real sealskin, the questions
became more and more direct, and all Mrs. Cliff could do was to stand
with her back against the captain's generosity, as if it had been a rock,
and rely upon it for defence.

But when the neighbors had all gone home, and the trunk had to be opened,
so that it could be lightened before being carried up-stairs, the remarks
of Willy and Betty cut clean to the soul of the unfortunate possessor of
its contents. Of course, the captain had not actually given her this
thing, and that thing, and the other, or the next one, but he had allowed
her a sum of money, and she had expended it according to her own
discretion. How much that sum of money might have been, Willy and Betty
did not dare to ask,--for there were limits to Mrs. Cliff's
forbearance,--but when they went to bed, they consulted together.

If it had not been for the private parlor and the drawing-room car, they
would have limited Captain Horn's generosity to one hundred dollars. But,
under the circumstances, that sum would have been insufficient. It must
have been nearly, if not quite, two hundred. As for Mrs. Cliff, she went
to bed regretting that her reservations had not been more extended, and
that she had not given the gold mound in th