n? A returning wave of bitterness threw him back
into his old despair.

The twilight had slowly gathered over the view as he gazed--or, rather
a luminous concentration above the pueblo and bay had left the outer
circle of fog denser and darker. Emboldened by the apparent desertion of
the Embarcadero, he began to retrace his steps down the slope, keeping
close to the wall so as to avoid passing before the church again, or a
closer contact with the gardener among the vines. In this way he reached
the path he had skirted the night before, and stopped almost under
the shadow of the Alcalde's house. It was here he had rested and
hidden,--here he had tasted the first sweets of isolation and oblivion
in the dreamy garden,--here he had looked forward to peace with the
passing of the ship,--and now? The sound of voices and laughter
suddenly grated upon his ear. He had heard those voices before. Their
distinctness startled him until he became aware that he was standing
before a broken, half-rotting door that permitted a glimpse of the
courtyard of the neighboring house. He glided quickly past it without
pausing, but in that glimpse beheld Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb half
reclining in the corridor--in the attitude he had often seen them on the
deck of the ship--talking and laughing with a group of Mexican gallants.
A feeling of inconceivable loathing and aversion took possession of
him. Was it to THIS he was returning after his despairing search for
oblivion? Their empty, idle laughter seemed to ring mockingly in his
ears as he hurried on, scarce knowing whither, until he paused before
the broken cactus hedge and crumbling wall that faced the Embarcadero.
A glance over the hedge showed him that the strip of beach was deserted.
He looked up the narrow street; it was empty. A few rapid strides across
it gained him the shadow of the sea-wall of the Presidio, unchecked and
unhindered. The ebbing tide had left a foot or two of narrow shingle
between the sea and the wall. He crept along this until, a hundred yards
distant, the sea-wall reentered inland around a bastion at the entrance
of a moat half filled at high tide by the waters of the bay, but now a
ditch of shallow pools, sand, and debris. He leaned against the bastion,
and looked over the softly darkening water.

How quiet it looked, and, under that vaporous veil, how profound and
inscrutable! How easy to slip into its all-embracing arms, and sink into
its yielding bosom, leavin