s on that fateful night.

"The loss of life, it is now feared, is much greater than at first
imagined. To the list that has been already published we must add the
name of James Farendell, the energetic contractor so well known to
our citizens, who was missing the morning after the fire. His calcined
remains were found this afternoon in the warped and twisted iron shell
of his counting-house, the wooden frame having been reduced to charcoal
in the intense heat. The unfortunate man seems to have gone there to
remove his books and papers,--as was evidenced by the iron safe being
found open,--but to have been caught and imprisoned in the building
through the heat causing the metal sheathing to hermetically seal the
doors and windows. He was seen by some neighbors to enter the building
while the fire was still distant, and his remains were identified by his
keys, which were found beneath him. A poignant interest is added to his
untimely fate by the circumstance that he was to have been married on
the following day to the widow of his late partner, and that he had,
at the call of duty, that very evening left a dinner party given to
celebrate the last day of his bachelorhood--or, as it has indeed proved,
of his earthly existence. Two families are thus placed in mourning, and
it is a singular sequel that by this untoward calamity the well-known
firm of Farendell & Cutler may be said to have ceased to exist."

Mr. Farendell started to his feet. But a lurch of the schooner as she
rose on the long swell of the Pacific sent him staggering dizzily back
to his seat, and checked his first wild impulse to return. He saw it all
now,--the fire had avenged him by wiping out his persecutor, Scranton,
but in the eyes of his contemporaries it had only erased HIM! He might
return to refute the story in his own person, but the dead man's partner
still lived with his secret, and his own rehabilitation could only
revive his former peril.

*****

Four years elapsed before the late Mr. Farendell again set foot in the
levee of Sacramento. The steamboat that brought him from San Francisco
was a marvel to him in size, elegance, and comfort; so different from
the little, crowded, tri-weekly packet he remembered; and it might, in a
manner, have prepared him for the greater change in the city. But he was
astounded to find nothing to remind him of the past,--no landmark, nor
even ruin, of the place he had known. Blocks of brick buildings, with
thor