at Contra Costa.
How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man
who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as
unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at
times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked
to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally. Even his
dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs. Bunker to put up her hair and button
her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.

"Then your husband's name is Bunker?" he said when she paused at last.
"That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for
generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan. Well, Mrs. Bunker, YOUR
family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your
father calls himself a Free-States man. You ought to know something of
farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who
emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers."

All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being. And
Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family
was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not
end there. He talked of her husband's business--he explained the vast
fishing resources of the bay and coast. He showed her how the large
colony of Italian fishermen were inimical to the interests of California
and to her husband--particularly as a native American trader. He told
her of the volcanic changes of the bay and coast line, of the formation
of the rocky ledge on which she lived. He pointed out to her its value
to the Government for defensive purposes, and how it naturally commanded
the entrance of the Golden Gate far better than Fort Point, and that it
ought to be in its hands. If the Federal Government did not buy it of
her husband, certainly the State of California should. And here he fell
into an abstraction as deep and as gloomy as before. He walked to the
window, paced the floor with his hand in his breast, went to the door,
and finally stepped out of the cabin, moving along the ledge of rocks to
the shore, where he stood motionless.

Mrs. Bunker had listened to him with parted lips and eyes of eloquent
admiration. She had never before heard anyone talk like THAT--she had
not believed it possible that any one could have such knowledge. Perhaps
she could not understand all he said, but she would try to remember it
after he had gone. She co