Your mother desires to know if you have forgotten the time when she
    used to have you sleep with her, each in one arm, showing the great
    love and care she had for you; she remembers, and can’t forget.

Your grandfather informs you that he still keeps the butcher shop, and bar-room, and that scarcely a day passes without his thinking of you.  He still feels very bad that you did not, before going away, come to him and say “Good-bye grandfather.”  He forgives you, however, and hopes you will come and see him.  When you get this letter you must write.

Yours affectionately,

                                CHRISTIAN BRUNNER,
                                MARY BRUNNER.

Letters following the foregoing assured us that grandma had become fully satisfied that the stories told her by Mrs. Stein were untrue.  She freely acknowledged that she was miserable and forlorn without us, and begged us to return to the love and trust which awaited us at our old home.  This, however, we could not do.

Before the close of the Winter, Frances and Georgia began preparations for boarding school in Sacramento, and I being promised like opportunities for myself later, wrote all about them to grandma, trusting that this course would convince her that we were permanently separated from her, and that Elitha and her husband had definite plans for our future.  I received no response to this, but Georgia’s first communication from school contained the following paragraph: 

I saw Sallie Keiberg last week, who told me that her mother had a letter from the old lady (Grandma Brunner) five weeks ago.  A man brought it.  And that the old lady had sent us by him some jewellery, gold breast-pins, earrings, and wristlets.  He stopped at the William Tell Hotel.  And that is all they know about him and the presents.

CHAPTER XXXIV

TRAGEDY IN SONOMA—­CHRISTIAN BRUNNER IN A PRISON CELL—­ST. CATHERINE’S CONVENT AT BENICIA—­ROMANCE OF SPANISH CALIFORNIA—­THE BEAUTIFUL ANGEL IN BLACK—­THE PRAYER OF DONA CONCEPCION ARGUELLO REALIZED—­MONASTIC BITES.

Time passed.  Not a word had come to me from Sonoma in months, when Benjamin handed me the Union, and with horror I read the headlines to which he pointed:  “TRAGEDY IN SONOMA.  CHRISTIAN BRUNNER, AN OLD RESIDENT, SLAYS HIS OWN NEPHEW!”

From the lurid details published, I learned that the Brunners had asked this nephew to come to them, and had sent him money to defray his expenses from Switzerland to California.  Upon his arrival in Sonoma, he had settled himself in the proffered home, and at once begun a life of extravagance, at the expense of his relatives.  He was repeatedly warned against trifling with their affection, and wasting their hard-earned riches.  Then patience ceased, and he was forbidden the house of his uncle.