Imperial Valley press., 1910-11-26
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 RIGHT IN SOUTHEASTERN CALIFORNIA Held by
 The Imperial Valley Press.

although she had never learned to dance, and could not ride horse and did not know one card in the deck from another. She could talk fluently and well upon serious subjects, but small gossip was utterly foreign to her.
 Frequently, one might almost say habitually, when cruising on the Hi- ram and Susan she wore the ordinary dess of a sailor. She wore it without consciousness of immodesty or impro- priety, almost without thought of it. It was convenient and it suited her. If she had had other standards by which to measure herself she might have appreciated the situation better.
 She had been loved by many men, but they were mostly the rough sail ors, the mates and officers of her ia ther's ship, but none of them had had the least power to awaken the most fugitive emotions in her heart, and the present mate, MT. Owen Conant, was not more successful than the others. Love, when it came, would be great awakening to her.
 The father and daughter conversed in low tones as they paced the weary watch. It was significant of Susans capacities that as they tramped to and fro on the deck her father often felt the touch of steel impinging against him, which showed that the belt she wore carried pistols and cutlass.
 There were only 30 in the crew of the Hiram and Susan, which since the beginning of the war had carried letter of marque. Capt Hiram Hub bell was peaceful trader, but he was not above picking up the windfalls that fortune cast athwart his prov, and with the thrift of his ancestry he had already added considerably to the ventures of his ordinary trade by taking several small vessles belong ing to the British, and he had fought one smart brush with a rather heavier privateer of the enemy, which he had successfully beaten off.
 The long course of the war which had dragged on through seven years, had told heavily upon American sea- men, and the present crew of the merchantmen had been recruited mainly in Bordeaux, whence the last lading had been taken, and a more rascally crowd of blackguards and cutthroats Captain Hiram had never commanded.
 Needs must when there are no others he thought philosophically. and he determined that before the ship reached Boston he would have tanned some of the more turbulent spirits and let them know what it was to have a master.
 For the same reason it had been difficult to get officers, and the Hiram and Susan had sailed with but three.
 One of them, the second mate, had gone with the best men in a small prize which had been captured the week before. This left but the cap- tian and the first mate, MT. Owen Conant, who was eminently fitted for some higher command, but who had remained attached to the ship for several years because he was more attached to the shipmaster's daughter.
 Under such circumstances the boat swain would have been called upon to take watch, but the best candidate who had presented himself for this position at Bordeaux had been a Frenchman, whose name on this cruise was Francois.
 He was good enough seaman, a handsome, devil mayo care sort of fel- low, who concealed beneath his grace and pleasant address as black a heart as ever filled the human bosom. What his career had been, what his history, Captain Hiram did not know. He shrewdly surmised, however, after