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“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been in California for the last six years. And before that I went quite round the world in a whaling ship!”

“Good gracious!”

The stranger sent a puff of smoke curling gracefully over his head.

“It’s very strange, my dear lady, how often you see one thing as you go wandering about the world after that fashion.”

“And what is that?”

“Men, without house or home above their heads, roving here and there, and turning up in all sorts of odd places; caring very little for life as a general thing, and making fortunes just to fling them away again, and all for one reason. You don’t ask me what that is? No doubt you know already very well.”

“I think not, sir.”

“Because a woman has jilted them!”

Here was a long pause, and Mr. Townsend’s pipe emitted short puffs with surprising rapidity. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and the widow’s cheek was dyed with blushes as she thought of the absent Sam.

“I wonder how women manage when they get served in the same way,” said the stranger musingly; “you never meet them roaming up and down in that style.”

“No,” said Mrs. Townsend, with some spirit, “if a woman is in trouble she must stay at home and bear it, the best way she can. And there’s more women bearing such things than we know of, I dare say.”

“Like enough. We never know whose hand gets pinched in a trap unless they scream. And women are too shy or too sensible–which you choose–for that.”

“Did you ever, in all your wanderings, meet any one by the name of Samuel Payson?” asked the widow, unconcernedly.

The stranger looked toward her; she was rummaging the table-drawer for her knitting work, and did not notice him. When it was found, and the needles in motion, he answered her.

“Payson–Sam Payson? Why, he was my most intimate friend! Do you know him?”

“A little–that is, I used to, when I was a girl. Where did you meet him?”

“He went with me on the whaling voyage I told you of, and afterward to California. We had a tent together, and some other fellows with us, and we worked the same claim for more than six months.”

“I suppose he was quite well?”

“Strong as an ox.”

“And–and happy?” pursued the widow, bending closer over her knitting.

“Hum–the less said about that the better, perhaps. But he seemed to enjoy life after a fashion of his own. And he got rich out there, or rather, I will say, well off.”

Mrs. Townsend did not pay much attention to that part of the story. Evidently she had not finished asking questions, but she was puzzled about her next one. At last she brought it out beautifully:

“Was his wife with him in California?”

The stranger looked at her with twinkling eyes.

“His wife, ma’am! Why, bless you, he has not got any wife.”

“Oh, I thought–I mean I heard”–here the little widow remembered the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, and stopped short before she told such a tremendous fib.

“Whatever you heard of his marrying was all nonsense, I can assure you. I knew him well, and he had no thoughts of the kind about him. Some of the boys used to tease him about it, but he soon made them stop.”

“How?”

“He just told them frankly that the only woman he ever loved had jilted him years before, and married another man. After that no one ever mentioned the subject to him, except me.”

Mrs. Townsend laid her knitting aside, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.

“He was another specimen of the class of men I was speaking of. I have seen him face death a score of times as quietly as I face the fire. ‘It matters very little what takes me off,’ he used to say; ‘I’ve nothing to live for, and there’s no one that will shed a tear for me when I am gone.’ It’s a sad thought for a man to have, isn’t it?”