redoubled her efforts: it began to creak and groan, the great arms were
slowly uplifted, and the signal made.
But the familiar sounds of the moving machinery had pierced through
Jarman's sluggish consciousness as no other sound in heaven or earth
could have done, and awakened him to the one dominant sense he had
left,--the habit of duty. She heard him roll from the bed with an oath,
stumble to the door, and saw him dash forward with an affrighted face,
and plunge his head into a bucket of water. He emerged from it pale and
dripping, but with the full light of reason and consciousness in his
eyes. He started when he saw her; even then she would have fled, but he
caught her firmly by the wrist.
Then with a hurried, trembling voice she told him all and everything. He
listened in silence, and only at the end raised her hand gravely to his
lips.
"And now," she added tremulously, "you must fly--quick--at once; or it
will be too late!"
But Richard Jarman walked slowly to the door of his cabin, still holding
her hand, and said quietly, pointing to his only chair:--
"Sit down; we must talk first."
What they said was never known, but a few moments later they left the
cabin, Jarman carrying in a small bag all his possessions, and Cara
leaning on his arm. An hour later the priest of the Mission Dolores was
called upon to unite in matrimony a frank, honest-looking sailor and an
Italian gypsy-looking girl. There were many hasty unions in those days,
and the Holy Church was only too glad to be able to give them its
legal indorsement. But the good Padre was a little sorry for the honest
sailor, and gave the girl some serious advice.
The San Francisco papers the next morning threw some dubious light upon
the matter in a paragraph headed, "Another Police Fiasco."
"We understand that the indefatigable police of San Francisco, after
ascertaining that Marco Franti, the noted gold-dust thief, was hiding on
the shore near the Presidio, proceeded there with great solemnity, and
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