Victoriano was so depressed that he felt a presentiment of never more seeing Clarence. He looked at the two horses as if they were a last token of his friendship, and he hurried out of the stable and out of town quickly, to be alone with the silent moon and his own thoughts; his thoughts of Alice, of Clarence and Mercedes going with him, as he drove home. But Victoriano's thoughts of those three interesting persons were shared by many others.

Don Mariano and Dona Josefa sat by Mercedes' bedside. Her heavy slumber began to alarm them. She lay motionless, with closed eyelids, but she was not sleeping, for she would open her eyes when they spoke to her.

About midnight Dona Josefa asked her if she had been sleeping. She shook her head and whispered:

"I am waiting for Clarence. He is coming, sitting on a water lily. I see him. I am waiting."

The look of dismay that Dona Josefa exchanged with her husband, revealed to each other their terrible anxiety and dread.

"We must wait for Victoriano, and if Clarence does not come, then we must send for a doctor," Don Mariano whispered.

But Mercedes heard him, and said, scarcely audibly: "He will come. I am waiting. He loves me. He don't want to kill me."

When Victoriano arrived it was near daylight, but Don Mariano was up and came out to meet him. Seeing the phaeton with only one occupant, he knew the sad truth. Victoriano gave him Clarence's letter, which he read with the keenest regret, feeling that if he had stayed at home, as Mercedes had begged, Clarence would not have felt compelled to go, but would have been made happy under that roof, as he deserved to be. Vain regrets now.

He was gone, and there was nothing to be done but wait until he arrived at San Francisco. It would only be a matter of three days, Don Mariano tried to argue to himself, but the experiences of the last two days had taught him how much mischief might be effected in a very short space of time.

When he returned to Mercedes' room he found that she was sleeping, but her sleep was restless, and now a high fever had set in. Her cheeks were like red roses, and her pulse beat with telegraphic velocity. She moaned and moved her head, as if it pained her, but did not awake. It was evident that a doctor must be sent for immediately.

Victoriano never drove or rode past Darrell's house without looking at a certain window next to that of Clarence's room. As he came from town now, before driving into the court of his own house, he looked towards the well-known window. His heart beat with alarm, seeing a light through the shutters. Alice must be ill, he thought, and that light has been burning all night. The lover's heart had guessed the truth. Alice was ill with a raging fever, and when daylight came, instead of the fever passing off, as Mrs. Darrell had hoped, she became delirious.

Victoriano did not go to bed. He preferred to walk out to the front piazza and have another look at that window of Alice's room. Yes the light was still burning. He felt sure that she was ill. Was she to be sick, and he not able to see her? or inquire for her? How angry he felt at old Darrell. Poor Tano, he was a prey to contending emotions. He now wished to see Mercedes, and had told his father that he would lie in one of the hammocks in the veranda, instead of going to bed, so that he would be called to Mercedes' room as soon as she awoke.

Presently Don Mariano came and said to him: "Victoriano, Mercedes is awake, but so entirely out of her head that she does not know any one of us. We must send for a physician."

"I will go at once," Victoriano said, jumping to his feet.

"No, you have been up all night. We don't want too many sick to take care of. Gabriel will go."

Victoriano looked towards the fascinating window, and hesitating a little, said:

"I am afraid Alice is sick too. Evidently a light has been burning in her room all night. She fainted when Clarence was leaving them, and for the last two days she has been so nervous, Everett says, that she was almost in convulsions."

"There is some one going out in Clarence's buggy. Perhaps they are sending for a doctor," Don Mariano said.

"I believe it," Victoriano said, watching the buggy. "It is Everett.

Alice is ill, I am sure. Retty is coming this way."

Everett was driving fast, and in a very few minutes was at the gate, and coming to the piazza.

"I ventured to come up," he said, "because I saw you here. It is a most unchristian hour to go into a neighbor's house."

"Is Alice sick, Retty?" Victoriano asked, without heeding Everett's apology for coming.

"Yes, she has a high fever, and is very delirious. I am going for a doctor, but as she has been calling for Clarence most piteously, mother thought he would come to see her."

Don Mariano and Victoriano turned several shades paler than they were before, but they related to Everett what had happened, as far as they knew. Still the reason _why_ Clarence left must yet remain a mystery to them until Mercedes could explain it.

Everett was greatly disconcerted and pained. He had hoped to find Clarence, and as his father seemed moved and grieved at Alice's illness, all the family inferred that he would be only too glad to see Clarence restored to them.

"I must hurry for a doctor," said Everett, with trembling lips, "and when Clarence arrives in San Francisco he will find a telegram awaiting him there."

"He will find two," said Don Mariano.

"He can never stay away if he knows that Miss Mercedes and Alice are sick-sick with grief at his going from us," Everett said; adding: "are you not going to send for a physician for Miss Mercedes?"

"Yes; Gabriel will go very soon," Don Mariano replied.

"Who is your doctor? Can't I call him for you?"

On being told the doctor's name, Everett said that he was the one he proposed to bring for Alice. Don Mariano then wrote a line asking the doctor to come, and Everett hurried off on his sad errand.

Clarence had passed the night on deck, walking about in the moonlight, or sitting down to muse by the hour, with no one near-no company but his thoughts. He felt ill and weary, but wakeful, and could not bear to lie down to rest. He must be moving about and thinking. He felt convinced that his father had some _other_ cause of irritation than the mere fact of the land having been paid for, but what that cause could be he had not the remotest idea. Then his thoughts would go back to their center of attraction, and pass in review, over and over again, the last scene at the Alamar house, and every word that Mercedes had said. The more he reflected upon them, the clearer it seemed to him that Mercedes could not help thinking it would be humiliating to marry him, for how could a lady marry the son of a man who used such low language? And if she did, out of the purest devotion and tenderest love, could she avoid a feeling of loathing for such a man? Certainly not; and such a man was his father; and Clarence's thoughts traveled around this painful circle all night.

On arriving at Wilmington, he heard the puffing of the little tug boat, coming to ferry the passengers to Los Angeles. He had nothing to do at Los Angeles, but he would go with the passengers, rather than wait all day in the steamer at anchor, rolling like a little canoe, and whose fate was too much like his own-as he, too, was tossing over a broad expanse, a boundless ocean, like a block of wood, helpless, compelled to obey, as though he was an infant. He took a cup of coffee, and joined the passengers on the little tug boat, which was soon meandering over the shallow, muddy creek, or rather swamp, with its little crooked channels, which is to be made into an harbor, with time, patience and money.

At Los Angeles a surprise awaited Clarence, an incident which, coming after those of the previous night, was delightful, indeed. He was sauntering past a hotel, when he heard the well known voice of Fred Haverly, calling him.

"You are the very man I came to see. I am now expecting at any moment, a dispatch from Hubert in answer to my inquiry for your whereabouts," Fred said, conducting Clarence to his room, where they could talk business without being interrupted.

The business which brought Fred up from the mines was soon explained, and in conclusion Fred said:

"I wish you could go with me, see the ores yourself, and talk with the men who wish to buy the mines. But the weather is frightfully hot, and you are not looking well. What is the matter? May I inquire?"

Clarence soon told Fred all that had happened at home, and how he was exiled, and did not care where he went. Fred was truly distressed, for he had never seen Clarence take anything so much to heart and be so cast down.

"I'll tell you what we had better do to-day. Let us take a carriage, and go for a drive among the orange groves. Then we will come back to dinner. After dinner we will kill time somehow for a couple of hours, then you go to bed. To-morrow you will decide what to do."

"But to-morrow there will be no steamer to take me to San Francisco."

"Then wait for the next. The matters you have under consideration are too important to decide hastily."

"That is true. I wish some one had reminded me of that fact last evening. I'll let the steamer go, and if I do not decide to go with you, I'll take the next boat. But now, as to our drive, I think I would rather have it after I had some breakfast, because I begin to feel faint, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours."

Clarence sat down to a very nice breakfast, but did not succeed in eating it. He had no appetite. All food was distasteful to him. They had their drive and dinner, and he managed to get some sleep. This, however, did not refresh him, and he felt no better. Still, he decided to go to see his "_bonanza_," and talk with the men who wished to buy the mines.

If he did not sell them, Fred thought stamp mills ought to be put up, as the ore heaps were getting to be too high and too numerous and very rich.

Clarence devoted that day to writing letters. He wrote to his mother, Alice and Everett, to George, Gabriel and Victoriano; but his longest letters were to Mercedes and Don Mariano.

On the following day he and Fred took the stage for Yuma. When they reached that point, the river boat was about to start, thus Clarence and Fred lost no time in going up the river to their mines. But as the navigation up the Colorado River, above Fort Yuma, was rather slow, having to steam against the current following the tortuous channel of that crooked, narrow stream, and the mines were more than three hundred miles from Yuma (about thirty from Fort Mojave), they did not arrive as soon as they would have wished, and Clarence had been stricken down with typhoid fever before they reached their camp.

CHAPTER XXX.-_Effect of Bad Precept and Worse Example._

The whir of threshing machines was heard in the valleys of the Alamar rancho, and wagons loaded with baled hay went from the fields like moving hills. The season had been good, and the settlers, forgetting their past conduct, were beginning to calculate on the well-known good nature and kind heart of the Don, to get their lands by purchasing them from him at a low price and easy terms when he got his patent.

Gasbang and Mathews were the only ones who still slandered the entire Alamar family, in the vilest language, having for their instigator and legal adviser the little lawyer, Peter Roper, _protege_ of Judge Lawlack and partner of Colonel Hornblower.