s assigned her about the house.
For myself, I would not set my foot in it, except on the occasions
referred to; but the rent, and the care of it, he had free. Such was the
moral degradation of the man, through his own acts, that after all that
had passed, he actually cried, and begged of me the privilege to remain
in that room, and be taken care of, as he had been used to be."

"What did you answer him?"

"I told him never to darken my door--never to offend my sight again;
that I should never be quite happy while his head was above the sod. O,
I was very vindictive! And he was as mild as milk. He 'could not see why
I should hate him so, who had always had so high a regard for me. He had
never known a woman he admired and loved so much!' Even I was astonished
at the man's abjectness."

"It is not uncommon in similar cases. Dependence makes any one more or
less mean; but it is more noticeable in men, who by nature and by custom
are made independent. And so you were free at last?"

"Free and happy. I felt as light as a bird, and wondered I couldn't fly!
I was poor; but that was nothing. My business was broken up; but I felt
confidence in myself to begin again. My health, however, was very much
broken down, and my friends said I needed change. That, with the desire
to quit a country where I had suffered so much, determined me to come to
California. It was the land of promise to my husband--the El Dorado he
was seeking when he died. I always felt that if I had come here in the
first place, my life would have been very different. So, finally, with
the help of my kind friends I came."

"_I_ should have felt, with your experience, no courage to undertake
life among strangers, and they mostly men."

"On the contrary, I felt armed in almost every point. The fact of being
a divorced woman was my only annoyance; but I was resolved to suppress
it so far as I was able, and to represent myself to be, as I was, the
widow of Mr. Greyfield. I took letters from my friends, to use in case
of need; and with nothing but my child, and money enough to take me
comfortably to the mines on the American River, left Oregon forever."

"To behold you as you are now, in this delightful home, it seems
impossible that you should have gone through what you describe; and yet
there must have been much more before you achieved the success here
indicated."

"It was nothing--nothing at all compared with the other. I proceeded
direct to the most popul