dents in her eventful life. All went as usual on
the journey until they had passed Santa Barbara on the morning of the
fateful day, April 18, when vague rumours of some great disaster began
to circulate in a confused way among the passengers. Soon they knew
the dreadful truth, though in the swift running of the train they
themselves had not felt the earthquake, and it was not long before
concrete evidence confirmed the reports, for at Salinas they were
halted by the broken Pajaro bridge. At that place Mrs. Stevenson slept
the night on the train, and the next day she hired a team and drove by
a roundabout way to Gilroy, near which, it will be remembered, her
ranch, Vanumanutagi, was situated. There they learned that San
Francisco was burning, and while Mr. Field made his way as best he
could to the doomed city, she camped in a little hotel in Gilroy
waiting for news--a prey meanwhile to the most intense fears for the
safety of various members of her family, from whom she was entirely
cut off.

While she waited as patiently as might be in the little country town,
there were strenuous times in the burning city, but, as telegraph
wires were all down and no mails were going out, she was compelled to
remain in suspense until three days later, when the fire was subdued
and Mr. Field was able to get back to her with the news that her
family were all safe and her house unharmed. The story of the rescue
of her house from the flames has been curiously contorted by persons
who have attempted to write about it without knowing the facts. The
real saviors of Mrs. Stevenson's house were her nephews and Mr. Field,
and even they might have lost the day had it not been for a
providential wind that blew in strongly from the sea against the
advancing wall of flame. For three days and nights they looked down
from their high post upon the raging furnace below and anxiously
watched the progress of the fire as it leaped from street to street in
its mad race up the hill, and when at last the two houses and a large
wooden reservoir immediately opposite went roaring up all hope seemed
gone. In the end it was through a mere trifle that the tide of fortune
was turned in their favour. In the garden there was a small cement
pool, the home of a tiny fish answering to the name of Jack. When the
water in the pool was slopped over by the earthquake poor Jack was
tossed some yards away upon the grass, whence he was rescued, alive
and wriggling, and restor