"Yes, but in the meantime I must earn enough to pay our board; remember, we owe one month's board already. Be patient for a few days longer." And she was patient, but anxious. A few days more passed, and she received Dona Josefa's letter, inclosing seventy dollars, and saying she hoped they would come immediately, for she wanted Gabriel at home.

"Now we have money enough to pay our board bill, and as George will surely come to our assistance, why should you go to work as a mason?

Darling, leave that work," Lizzie begged.

"Let us see; Clarence's cablegram was dated twenty days ago. They must have arrived in New York a week ago, and if he don't delay at all, he'll be here in two or three days," Gabriel said.

"Then why should you work like that?"

"I'll stop to-morrow, but I must give notice of a day or two, at least, for the foreman to get somebody else in my place."

When Gabriel arrived at his place of employment near Nob Hill, he found that his occupation that day would be different from what it had been before, and in the afternoon he was put to work at another place in the building. He would have to carry bricks and mortar up a ladder to quite a high wall. He told the foreman that he would rather not do that, as he had never done such work and was very awkward about it. The foreman said he had no one else to spare for that job, and Gabriel at last said he would try. He had carried many loads, and was beginning to tremble with fatigue, when upon going up, carrying a hod full of bricks, the ladder slipped to one side a little. In his effort to steady it, Gabriel moved it too much, and it fell to one side, taking him to the ground. As he fell, the bricks fell upon him. He was insensible for some time. When he regained consciousness he was being carried to a wagon which would take him to the city hospital. Lizzie, to whom the foreman had sent a message notifying her of the accident, now met the wagon.

"Where are you taking my husband?" she asked the driver.

"To the city hospital, ma'am."

"But why not take him home?"

"Because he will get attendance there quickly, Madam," said the foreman, who evidently felt he was to blame for a very painful accident.

"If that is the case, let us go to the hospital," Lizzie said, getting into the wagon. She sat beside Gabriel, and placed his head in her lap.

Gabriel smiled, and his beautiful eyes were full of love, but he could scarcely speak a word.

The jolting of the wagon gave him much pain, and Lizzie asked the driver to go very slow. "He ought to be carried on a stretcher, ma'am; he is too much hurt to go in a wagon," said the driver.

They now came to a street-crossing, and several wagons were standing still, waiting for a line of carriages to pass first.

"Oh, why do we wait? He is suffering so much!" Lizzie exclaimed. "He is bleeding; he might bleed to death!"

"We are waiting for them carriages to pass, ma'am. They are carrying people to a reception on Nob Hill, ma'am," said the driver.

On the other side of the street, in a carriage which also had been stopped that the guests for the Nob Hill festivities might pass, sat George and Clarence, just arrived, and on their way to see Lizzie and Gabriel. They saw that a man lay in a wagon which stood in front of them, and noticing that a woman sat by his side holding his head in her lap, bending over him anxiously, Clarence said to the driver that there seemed to be some one sick in that wagon, and that it should be allowed to pass.

"Yes, sir; but he is a hod-carrier who fell down and hurt himself. I suppose he'll die before he gets to the hospital," said the driver, indifferently, as if a hod-carrier more or less was of no consequence.

"The carriages must pass first, the police says."

As Lizzie raised her head to ask the driver to take some other street, they saw her. Both uttered an exclamation of surprise, and left their carriages immediately, walking hurriedly to the wagon where she was.

"Lizzie, my sister, why are you here?" George asked.

"Oh, George! Gabriel fell down!" she replied, sobbing, her courage failing now that she had some dear ones to protect her. "Oh, Clarence, see how you find my darling! We are taking him to the city hospital, but because those carriages must pass first my darling may die here-bleeding to death!"

"Let me go for a physician immediately," said Clarence.

"Wait," George said, "Which is the nearest from here, Lizzie, your house or the hospital? We must take him to the nearest place."

"The hospital is nearer, sir," the driver answered.

"Then let us go the hospital," George said, getting into the wagon beside his sister, shocked to find Gabriel in a situation which plainly revealed a poverty he had never imagined.

"I shall go for a surgeon, there might not be one at the hospital," said Clarence. "I shall be there when you arrive."

The wagon went so slowly that Clarence, with a doctor, overtook them before they reached the hospital. Meantime, Gabriel had whispered to Lizzie and George, in a few words, how he had fallen down.

On arriving at the hospital he was carried to the best room, with best attendance, two rooms adjoining were for his nurses, one to be occupied by Lizzie and the other by George and Clarence, for neither of them would leave Gabriel now.

The doctor would give no opinion as to his recovery. If he had internal injuries of a serious character, they might prove fatal, but of this it was impossible to judge at present. About eight o'clock Gabriel seemed to be resting a little more comfortably, and Lizzie took that opportunity to go to see her babies. She found them already asleep. The kind landlady had given them their supper and put them to bed. She told Lizzie of a good nurse who could be hired to take care of the baby, and that she would engage her to come the next morning. Lizzie thanked her, and then returned to her husband's bedside, and there, accompanied by George and Clarence, she passed the night.

About daylight, with great reluctance, she was prevailed upon to lie down on a lounge at the foot of Gabriel's bed, and as the patient seemed to be resting quietly, George and Clarence went into the next room to partake of a light collation.

George poured a glass of wine for Clarence and another for himself, and both drank in silence. Evidently they could not eat.

"Was it possible to imagine that Gabriel could have become so poor that he had to be a hod-carrier?" George said at last, scarcely above a whisper.

Clarence being as much moved, took some time to reply.

"The thing is to me so shockingly preposterous and so very heart-rending that it does not seem possible. And to think that if I had not gone away, I might, yes, could, have prevented so much suffering! Oh! the fool, the idiot that I was to go," said Clarence, rising and pacing the room in great agitation. "I will never forgive myself nor my bankers either, and shall take my money to some other bank. They should never have given Don Gabriel's place to anybody else, for it was at my request, and to oblige me that they employed him, and they have had the use of my money all this time. Oh! how I wish you could have established a bank here with the three hundred thousand dollars I placed to Don Mariano's credit, since he would not accept any payment for the cattle-_my_ cattle, mind you-lost in the snow. But perhaps three hundred thousand dollars would have been rather small capital."

"It would have been plenty to begin with, but as the understanding was that the bank was to be in San Diego, none of us felt authorized to change the plan. I doubt if Don Mariano would have drawn any of the three hundred thousand dollars. You know he mortgaged his rancho rather than take any of your money."

"His money, you ought to say, for I had already bought his cattle. I wish he had not taken so different a view of the matter. Really, the money was his from the moment I agreed to make the purchase. But tell me, why is it that Mrs. Mechlin lost her homestead. It might have been sold to help the family."

George related how Peter Roper "_jumped_" the Mechlin house in true vandalic style, breaking open the doors with axes and dragging out the furniture when the family were in great grief, and how this outrage as well as others were indulgently passed over by San Diego's august tribunal of justice. George, however, did not know all. He did not know that Judge Lawlack upon one occasion, when he had made a decision in favor of Peter Roper and against the Mechlins, discovering upon reflection that he had made a gross mistake, because the authority upon which he based his decision, obviously favored the Mechlins, had changed his decision. He actually called the attorneys of both sides into court and then amended his own decree and had an entirely different judgment entered-a judgment based upon another authority, which, with his construction of the law, favored Peter. Then again when the Mechlins tried to file another complaint, Peter got up, and in his coarse loquacity, vociferously exhorted his Honor to send all the plaintiffs and their attorney to jail for _contempt of court_ in daring to renew their complaint when his Honor had decided that they had no case; that the _innocent purchasers_, Roper and Gasbang, were the legitimate owners of the Mechlin place. Whereupon, his Honor Lawlack hurriedly slid off the judicial bench, under the judicial canopy, in high tantrums, and shuffled off the judicial platform, gruffly mumbling: "I have passed upon that before," and slouchingly made his exit.

The plaintiffs, their attorneys and their witnesses, were left to make the best of _such legal proceedings_! They could not even take an appeal to the Supreme Court, for they had no record; they could make no pleadings; Judge Lawlack had carefully and effectively done all he could to ruin their case. Peter winked and showed his yellow teeth and purple gums in high glee, proud to have exhibited his influence with the Court, and, as usual, went to celebrate his triumph by getting intoxicated and being whipped, so that he had a black eye and skinned nose for several days.

It was obvious to George and Clarence that the position of Gabriel and Lizzie in San Francisco must have been painful in the extreme, and yet they did not know all. Lizzie had never told anybody all the disagreeable, humiliating, repugnant experiences she had had to pass through. She had tried to help her husband to find some occupation more befitting a gentleman than that of a day laborer. But she gave up her sad endeavors, seeing that she was only humiliating herself to no purpose. She met at times gentlemen and kind-hearted men, who were courteous to her, but oftener she found occasion to despise mankind for their unnecessary rudeness and most unprovoked boorishness. More painful yet was the evident change she noticed in the manners of her lady acquaintances.

Years before, when she was Lizzie Mechlin, she had moved in what was called San Francisco's _best_ society. Her family, being of the very highest in New York, were courted and caressed in exaggerated degree on their arrival in California. Afterwards, for the benefit of Mr.

Mechlin's health, they went to reside in San Diego. When Gabriel came to his position in the bank, she was again warmly received by all her society friends. But this cordiality soon vanished. Her family went back to New York, and she and Gabriel returned from San Diego to San Francisco to find that he had lost his place at the bank. Then he endeavored to get something else to do. This was bad enough, but when _she_ tried to help him, then her fashionable friends disappeared. Nay, they avoided her as if she had been guilty of some disgraceful act. The fact that Gabriel was a _native Spaniard_, she saw plainly, militated against them. If he had been rich, his nationality could have been forgiven, but no one will willingly tolerate a _poor native Californian_. To see all this was at first painful to Lizzie, but afterwards it began to be amusing and laughable to see people show their mean little souls and their want of brains in their eager chase after the rich, and their discourtesy to an old acquaintance who certainly had done nothing to forfeit respect. About that time the fever for stock gambling was at its height. The _Big Bonanza_ was, in the twinkling of an eye, making and unmaking money princes, and a new set of rich people had rushed into "San Francisco's best society." The leaders of the _ton_ then, who held title by priority of possession, not forgetting that many of them had had to serve a rigorous novitiate of years of probation before they had been admitted to the high circles, were disposed to be exclusive and keep off social "_jumpers_." But the weight of gold carried the day. Down came the jealously guarded gates; the very portals succumbed and crumbled under that heavy pressure. Farewell, exclusiveness! Henceforth, money shall be the sole requisite upon which to base social claims. High culture, talents, good antecedents, accomplishments, all were now the veriest trash. Money, and nothing but money, became the order of the day. Many of the newly created money-nobility lived but a day in their new, their sporadic, evanescent glory, and then, with a tumble of the stocks, went down head-foremost, to rise no more. But some of the luckiest survived, and are yet shining stars. Lizzie saw all this from her humble seclusion. Occasionally, at the houses of those few friends who had remained unchanged in her day of adversity, she met some of the newly arrived in society as well as a few of the fading lights, taking a secondary place. All the new and the old lights she saw, with equal impartiality, shifting their places continually, and she began to think that, after all, this transposing of positions perhaps was right, being the unavoidable outcome in a new country, where naturally the raw material is so abundant, and the chase after social position must be a sort of "_go-as-you-please_" race among the golden-legged.

Therefore, like the true lady that she was, Lizzie had quietly accepted her fate, and forgiven fickle society, without a murmur of complaint or a pang of regret. But what certainly was a perennial anguish, a crucifixion of spirit to her, was to see in Gabriel's pale face,-in those superb eyes of his,-all his mental suffering; then courage failed her, and on her bended knees she would implore a merciful heaven to pity and help her beloved, her beautiful archangel.

What Gabriel suffered in spirit probably no one will ever know, for though he inherited the natural nobility of his father, he was not like him communicative, ready to offer or receive sympathy. He was sensitive, kind, courteous and unselfish, but very reticent.

But if Gabriel had never complained, the eloquence of facts had said all that was to be said. In that hod full of bricks not only his own sad experience was represented, but _the entire history_ of the native Californians of _Spanish descent_ was epitomized. Yes, Gabriel carrying his hod full of bricks up a steep ladder, was a symbolical representation of his race. The natives, of Spanish origin, having lost all their property, must henceforth be hod-carriers.

Unjust laws despoiled them, but what of this? Poor they are, but who is to care, or investigate the cause of their poverty? The thriving American says that the native Spaniards are lazy and stupid and thriftless, and as the prosperous know it all, and are almost infallible, the fiat has gone forth, and the Spaniards of California are not only despoiled of all their earthly possessions, but must also be bereft of sympathy, because the world says they do not deserve it.

George and Clarence entertained a different opinion, however, and in suppressed, earnest tones they now reviewed the history of the Alamares, and feelingly deplored the cruel legislation that had ruined them.

Lizzie, unable to sleep, had again taken her place by the bedside, and sadly watched the beautiful face which seemed like that of slumbering Apollo. Would he recover, or was it possible that her darling would die, now when relief had come? Oh, the cruel fate that made him descend to that humble occupation.

Lizzie shuddered to think of all the suffering he would yet have to undergo. Oh, it was so inexpressibly sad to think that his precious life was risked for the pitiful wages of a poor hod-carrier!

CHAPTER XXXVII.-_Reunited at Last._