ng back and forth, his fingers opening and shutting
spasmodically.

"Uncle Bob," he said at length, "... after you married, what became--"

"Her mother sent the child East--to a sister. She was well
raised--educated. If she'd only stayed there, in that Massachusetts
town!"

"Then--Bertha didn't know?"

"Not till she came to San Francisco, after her mother's death. She had
to come to settle the estate. The mother left her everything--a string
of tenements. She was rich."

"Bertha came to you, then, I suppose."

"Yes, she came to me," said Robert Windham.

Suddenly, as though the memory overwhelmed him, Windham's face sank
forward in his hands.

"She was very sweet," his voice broke pitifully. "I--loved her."

* * * * *

Several days later Frank and his father paid a visit to the ruined city.
One had to get passes in Oakland and wear them on one's hat. Sightseers
were not admitted nor carried on ferry boats, trains.

Already Telegraph Hill was dotted with new habitations. It was rumored
that Andrea Sbarbora, banker and patron of the Italian Colony, was
bringing a carload of lumber from Seattle which he would sell to fire
sufferers on credit and at cost. The spirit of rehabilitation
was strong.

Frank was immensely cheered by it. But Francisco was overwhelmed by the
desolation. "I am going South," he told his son. "I can't bear to see
this. I don't even know where I am."

It was true. One felt lost in those acres of ashes and debris. Familiar
places seemed beyond memorial reconstruction, so smitten was the mind by
this horror of leveled buildings, gutted walls and blackened streets.

Francisco and Jeanne went to San Diego. There the former tried to
refashion the work of many months--two hundred pages of a novel which
the flames destroyed. Robert Windham and his family journeyed to Hawaii.
Frank did not see his uncle after that talk in the Berkeley Hills.

Parks and public spaces were covered with little green cottages in
orderly rows. Refugee camps one termed then and therein lived 20,000 of
the city's homeless.

Street cars were running. Passengers were carried free until the first
of May. Patrick Calhoun was trying to convert the cable roads into
electric lines in spite of the objection of the improvement clubs. He
was negotiating with the Supervisors for a blanket franchise to
electrize all of his routes.

"And he'll get it, too," Aleta told Frank as they dined togeth