chosen this road.  With the instinctive jealousy of a bucolic inland race born by great rivers, she did not like the sea; and again the dim and dreary waste tended to recall the vision connected with her husband’s flight, upon which she had resolutely shut her eyes.  But when she had reached it the road suddenly turned, following the trend of the beach, and she was exposed to the full power of its dread fascinations.  The combined roar of sea and shore was in her ears; as the direct force of the gale had compelled her to furl the protecting hood of the buggy to keep the light vehicle from oversetting or drifting to leeward, she could no longer shut out the heaving chaos on the right from which the pallid ghosts of dead and dying breakers dimly rose and sank as if in awful salutation.  At times through the darkness a white sheet appeared spread before the path and beneath the wheels of the buggy, which, when withdrawn with a reluctant hiss, seemed striving to drag the exhausted beach seaward with it.  But the blind terror of her horse, who swerved at every sweep of the surge, shamed her own half-superstitious fears, and with the effort to control his alarm she regained her own self-possession, albeit with eyelashes wet not altogether with the salt spray from the sea.  This was followed by a reaction, perhaps stimulated by her victory over the beaten animal, when for a time, she knew not how long, she felt only a mad sense of freedom and power; oblivious of even her sorrows, her lost home and husband, and with intense feminine consciousness she longed to be a man.  She was scarcely aware that the track turned again inland until the beat of the horse’s hoofs on the firm ground and an acceleration of speed showed her she had left the beach and the mysterious sea behind her, and she remembered that she was near the end of the first stage of her journey.  Half an hour later the twinkling lights of the roadside inn where she was to change horses rose out of the darkness.

Happily for her, the ostler considered the horse, who had a local reputation, of more importance than the unknown muffled figure in the shadow of the unfurled hood, and confined his attention to the animal.  After a careful examination of his feet and a few comments addressed solely to the superior creation, he led him away.  Mrs. Tucker would have liked to part more affectionately from her four-footed compatriot, and felt a sudden sense of loneliness at the loss of her new friend, but a recollection of certain cautions of Captain Poindexter’s kept her mute.  Nevertheless, the ostler’s ostentatious adjuration of “Now then, aren’t you going to bring out that mustang for the Senora?” puzzled her.  It was not until the fresh horse was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold into the attendant’s hand, that the “Gracias” of his unmistakable Saxon speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer’s caution.  Poindexter had evidently represented her to these people as a native Californian who did not speak English.  In her inconsistency her blood took fire at this first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face.  Why should he try to pass her off as anybody else?  Why should she not use her own, her husband’s name?  She stopped and bit her lip.