Strange to add, Mr. Hamlin’s surmise was correct.  Mr. Rylands found Jane still in the kitchen alone, terrified, remorseful, yet ever after silent on the subject.  Stranger still, the hired man became equally uncommunicative.  Mrs. Rylands, attributing her husband’s absence only to care of the stock, had gone to bed in a feverish condition, and Mr. Rylands did not deem it prudent to tell her of his interview.  The next day she sent for the doctor, and it was deemed necessary for her to keep her bed for a few days.  Her husband was singularly attentive and considerate during that time, and it was probable that Mrs. Rylands seized that opportunity to tell him the secret she spoke of the night before.  Whatever it was,—­for it was not generally known for a few months later,—­it seemed to draw them closer together, imparted a protecting dignity to Joshua Rylands, which took the place of his former selfish austerity, gave them a future to talk of confidentially, hopefully, and sometimes foolishly, which took the place of their more foolish past, and when the roll of calico came from the cross roads, it contained also a quantity of fine linen, laces, small caps, and other trifles, somewhat in contrast to the more homely materials ordered.

And when three months were past, the sitting-room was often lit up and made cheerful, particularly on that supreme occasion when, with a great deal of enthusiasm, all the women of the countryside flocked to see Mrs. Rylands and her first baby.  And a more considerate and devoted couple than the father and mother they had never known.

THE MAN AT THE SEMAPHORE

In the early days of the Californian immigration, on the extremest point of the sandy peninsula, where the bay of San Francisco debouches into the Pacific, there stood a semaphore telegraph.  Tossing its black arms against the sky,—­with its back to the Golden Gate and that vast expanse of sea whose nearest shore was Japan,—­it signified to another semaphore further inland the “rigs” of incoming vessels, by certain uncouth signs, which were again passed on to Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, where they reappeared on a third semaphore, and read to the initiated “schooner,” “brig” “ship,” or “steamer.”  But all homesick San Francisco had learned the last sign, and on certain days of the month every eye was turned to welcome those gaunt arms widely extended at right angles, which meant “sidewheel steamer” (the only steamer which carried the mails) and “letters from home.”  In the joyful reception accorded to that herald of glad tidings, very few thought of the lonely watcher on the sand dunes who dispatched them, or even knew of that desolate Station.