Luis, via San Francisco, an hour before her. He resolved to take the
boat; a careful scrutiny from a stateroom window of the arriving
passengers on the gangplank satisfied him that she had preferred the
stage. There was still the chance that in losing sight of her she
might escape him, but the risk seemed small. And a trifling
circumstance had almost unconsciously influenced him--after his
romantic and superstitious fashion--as to this final step.

He had been singularly moved when he heard that San Luis was the lady's
probable destination. It did not seem to bear any relation to the
mountain wilderness and the wild life she had just quitted; it was
apparently the most antipathic, incongruous, and inconsistent refuge
she could have taken. It offered no opportunity for the disposal of
booty, or for communication with the gang. It was less secure than a
crowded town. An old Spanish mission and monastery college in a sleepy
pastoral plain,--it had even retained its old-world flavor amidst
American improvements and social revolution. He knew it well. From
the quaint college cloisters, where the only reposeful years of his
adventurous youth had been spent, to the long Alameda, or double
avenues of ancient trees, which connected it with the convent of Santa
Luisa, and some of his youthful "devotions,"--it had been the nursery
of his romance. He was amused at what seemed to be the irony of fate,
in now linking it with this folly of his maturer manhood; and yet he
was uneasily conscious of being more seriously affected by it. And it
was with a greater anxiety than this adventure had ever yet cost him
that he at last arrived at the San Jose hotel, and from a balcony
corner awaited the coming of the coach. His heart beat rapidly as it
approached. She was there! But at her side, as she descended from the
coach, was the mysterious horseman of the Sierra road. Key could not
mistake the well-built figure, whatever doubt there had been about the
features, which had been so carefully concealed. With the astonishment
of this rediscovery, there flashed across him again the fatefulness of
the inspiration which had decided him not to go in the coach. His
presence there would have no doubt warned the stranger, and so estopped
this convincing denouement. It was quite possible that her companion,
by relays of horses and the advantage of bridle cut-offs, could have
easily followed the Three Pine coach and joined her at Stock