y of those who now dwell on Nob Hill."

From the above brief conversation, you will recall the principal
character whom you met in the story of "Teddy and Towser." The lad who
passed through more than one trying adventure had become a man well
along in middle life. After settling in California, he made it his
home. He married a lady of Spanish descent, to whom a single child was
born,--Warrenia, now a miss almost out of her teens. Although Mr.
Starland was younger than his partner and married later in life, his
son Jack was several years the elder of the daughter of Mr. Rowland.

Since these two young people have much to do in the chapters that
follow, the reader must be given a clear understanding of them and
their peculiar relation to each other.

While the parents had been partners in prosperity, they were also
united in affliction, for each had lost his wife by death, when the
children were small. Neither married again, for they had loved their
life companions too deeply and profoundly to think seriously of trying
to replace them.

Another minor but curious coincidence must be noted. Years after the
marriage of the partners, Mr. Starland employed a Spanish priest to
trace the genealogy of his wife, who felt a strong curiosity in the
matter. In doing so, he discovered that several generations earlier,
during the time of the Spanish settlement of the Southwest, the
ancestors of Mrs. Starland and Mrs. Rowland were related. This was
surprising but peculiarly pleasing to both families. Because of this
remote relationship, so triturated indeed that it had really vanished
into nothingness, Jack Starland and Warrenia Rowland called
themselves cousins.

It was just like the headstrong, impulsive, mischievous youth to go
still further. He hinted that the priest had not told the whole truth,
having been bribed to suppress it by the father of Warrenia, for
mysterious reasons, which he dared not divulge. What did this young
hopeful do but insist that he and Warrenia were brother and sister!
The idea, grotesquely impossible on the face of it, caused no end of
merriment and ridicule, but Jack stubbornly maintained his claim. He
declared further that the real name of Warrenia was the same as his
own,--that is Starland. He often addressed her as Miss Starland, and
she, with her fun-loving disposition, pretended to agree with him.
When together, they almost invariably spoke to or of each other as
brother and sister, and there w