brings the sweetest and soundest sleep, and gazed at the stars that had
kept faithful watch above them for so long, they talked in low tones
until a gentle sea-breeze set in and they were lulled to sleep by the
murmur of distant breakers, a music now heard by both of them for the
first time in their lives.

The next day they turned over their sole remaining wagon and their
ambulance to a government quartermaster. Then, having no baggage, they
were ready, without further preparation, to embark on the steamer
_Orizaba_ for San Francisco, to which place General Elting and Binney
Gibbs had gone on, by stage, from Los Angeles, some days before.

As the great ship entered the Golden Gate and steamed up the bay, past
Tamalpias, past the Presidio, past Alcatraz Island, and into the harbor
of San Francisco, Glen Eddy found it hard to realize that it was all
true, and that this young explorer, who was about to set foot in the
city of his most romantic day dreams, was really the boy who had started
from Brimfield ten months before, without an idea of what was before
him.

Chapter XL.

A HOME AND TWO FATHERS.

Of course they all went to the Occidental, for everybody went first to
the Occidental in those days. As they drove through the city, in open
carriages, their long hair, buckskin shirts, rags, in some cases
soleless and toeless boots, and generally wild and disreputable
appearance attracted much amused attention from the well-dressed
shoppers of Montgomery Street; and, when they trooped into the marble
rotunda of the great hotel, they excited the universal curiosity of its
other and more civilized guests.

But they did not mind--they enjoyed the sensation they were creating;
and Glen, who was one of the wildest-looking of them all, rather pitied
Binney Gibbs on account of the fine clothing he had already assumed, as
the two met and exchanged hearty greetings once more.

"Come up into my room, Glen," said Binney, eagerly, "I've got a lot of
Brimfield news, and there's a pile of letters for you besides. Only
think, Lame Wolf is playing short-stop on the ball nine, and they say
he's going to make one of the best players they've ever had."

The last news Glen had received from home was in the letters Mr. Hobart
had brought from Santa Fe nearly five months before. He had learned then
of Lame Wolf's safe arrival at Brimfield, and of his beginning to study
English; but now to hear of his being on the ball nine! That