re coffee? I'm going to turn
in for forty winks. Let the steward know when you want anything. Nobody
else will. We've got to face some more rollers after awhile. I dassen't
go inside Carmen Island."

But Loring had something more engrossing to think of than breakfast or
luncheon. So there was a little packet in the purser's safe, was there?
Valuable and not to be delivered except to their agent in 'Frisco. It
was in Pancha's name, yet not subject to Pancha's order. Why that
discrimination? And it was given the purser by Escalante--brother of
_the_ Escalante--another brother of the accomplished sharper of Sancho's
ranch. A precious trinity of blood relations were these! Small wonder
Don Ramon, had opposed his girl sister's union with one of their number.
Now, what on earth could that small packet contain, and was it likely
that the valuables were any more valuable than those snatched from his
saddle-bags the night of the assault at Gila Bend?--the watch and
diamonds of the late Captain Nevins now vanished into thin air,
apparently, for not a trace of him had appeared since the night he rode
away from Camp Cooke.

In genuine distress of mind, Loring had written from Yuma, as soon as
the doctor would permit, to the address penned by Nevins in presence of
the court, informing that vagabond officer's wife that the valuables he
had been charged to place in her hands had been forcibly taken from him,
after he himself had been assaulted and stricken senseless; that every
effort had been made to recover them, but without success; that he
deplored their loss and her many misfortunes, and begged to be informed
if he could serve her in any other way. The doctors had promised him
that he would be restored by a sea voyage. It would be three weeks,
probably, before he could reach San Francisco, and meantime he knew from
the captain's admission that she was probably in need.

"No one," wrote Loring, "is dependent upon me, and I beg your acceptance
as a loan, as a temporary accommodation, or as anything you please, of
the inclosed draft." (It covered nearly every dollar he happened to have
to his credit in the bank at San Francisco, though he had pay accounts
still collectible.) It took nearly ten days for answer to reach him,
and Loring hid himself away to read it when the letter came, addressed
in a hand he knew too well:

"Naomi, my beloved sister, is prostrated by her sorrows and
anxieties," it began, "and I must be her