Everybody was kind and solicitous, sending in cooked food, offering to sit up at night, but Miss Beers was equal to all demands. The sick woman really did improve. Laverne hovered about her mother, read to her out of her geography and Peter Parley's history, as well as the sweetest hymns out of the hymn book. Jimmy Cox came over and did the chores, provided the wood, took Verne out on his sled, and the days passed along. Jason Chadsey returned. Miss Beers had to go her way, and a neighbor came in to do what was needed. One day, before the minister and the Squire, she gave her child to Jason Chadsey, who promised to care for her and educate her, and keep her from all harm.

"You both know that I loved her mother and would gladly have married her in the old days, but untoward fate intervened. I could find no trace of the child's father. She has no near relatives to care for her, so I shall be father to her, and Heaven may judge me at the last."

He was holding the child on his knee that evening, "You are to be my little girl always," he said, with tender solemnity. "You shall be made happy as a little bird. And if you will only love me – "

"Oh, I shall, I do. And will you stay here? Mother will be so glad. She was longing so to have you come back. You will never go away again?"

"Never from you, my little girl;" and he kissed the child's trust into perfect belief.

There were two more alarms, then the frail life went out peacefully. The child was stunned. It had seemed right for grandmother to leave a world that she was forgetting about, but Laverne could not understand all the mystery. Her mother had always been quiet and reserved, it was the fashion in those days, and the child could not miss the things she had never had. And neither could she ever have understood her sorrow over the great mistake in giving her such a father. But Heaven had helped her to make amends, for the child was the embodiment of her own youth. It was all she had and she gave it to the man who had loved her sincerely, glad and thankful that she was not to be left to the uncertain charity of the world.

The frightened child clung very closely to him. The worn furniture and bedding were distributed among the neighbors, a few keepsakes collected, a few good-bys said, and good wishes given, and they went first to Boston and then to New York. Then they were to go to the wonderful land of gold and sunshine, California. They found it on the map. And there was the long, long sail, and the little girl was going far away from the only sorrow of her life, that was so strangely mingled with the only dear love. For while the other had been hedged about with the severe training of the times, afraid of sinfulness in indulging in what was called carnal affections, even in loving a child, now she had the utmost tenderness lavished upon her. She had no one but him, and that was a continual joy and kept his heart at high tide. She was all his.

Later she was to know about the young love between them, and how when her mother was just fifteen he had shipped for three years aboard a merchantman. They had sailed about the Eastern seas, bought and sold, and at last started for home, to be wrecked, and nearly all had perished. Of the few saved there were no tidings of Jason Chadsey. Laverne waited and hoped and came to her twentieth birthday. David Westbury was considered a smart young man. He had been a clerk in a store, he had worked on a newspaper, and taught school, and could turn his hand to a good many things. He had a smooth tongue, too, and a certain polish in his manner above the country youths. Grandmother espoused his cause at once. Jason Chadsey was dead, lovers were not so plentiful in these small places, where the enterprising young men went away. It was hard to stand out against one's own mother, and all the years to come to be taunted as an old maid. And so Laverne married David Westbury, and when her little girl was a month old he came back not altogether penniless, but it was too late.

He had roamed about the world a good deal. He had made money, and spent it freely, lost some of it, helped friends in distress. Now, he was going out to that wonderful land that had been the dream of the Spaniard, and another nation had brought the dream true. He would visit the little old village once more, and see how it had fared with his early love and his old friends, and then say good-bye forever. And knowing she was near to death, Laverne Westbury told him her sad story, and he read between the broken sentences that he had been her early love, her only love.

So they whiled the time away, the man's dreams growing more vivid, the child's fading. They passed strange countries, there were seas of peerless blue, seas of emerald green, then strange colors commingled. There were cloudless skies and broad sheets of sunshine that seemed to envelop the whole world in a blaze; there were nights of such glowing stars as one seldom sees on land, there were gray days with sullen winds, and storms that sent a thrill to the stoutest hearts, when the vessel groaned and creaked and the women cried in terror. But Laverne only crept closer in Uncle Jason's arms and felt safe.

They stopped here and there at a port, places they hunted up on the map, cities that seemed marvels to the little girl, shores with waving blooming forests and almost steaming fragrance. Strange birds, strange many-hued fish, darting hither and thither, seaweed that in the sunshine looked like masses of bloom, or living things swimming about. Curious people, too, speaking languages no little girl could understand, then leaving the warmth, and shivering with blasts of cold air, wonderful islands and capes jutting out – some bleak and bare and rocky, others shining in verdure and waving smiles of welcome, it seemed; going safely round the Horn with half their journey done and finding more wonders, great mountain ranges, shores thickly studded with islands, natives swimming about like fishes, queer, half ruinous old Spanish towns, and when they stopped at a port, such a clatter of tongues, such a screaming of voices, such a confusion, one was glad to get out of it to lovely, enchanting peace once more.

Warmer grew the air with a languorous, permeating fragrance. Moonlight silvering the water that leaped softly up and down as if playing hide and seek with the next wave. All the boundless space lighted with it, going round the world, swelling, decreasing, a golden crescent, then a pale gibbous thing and afterward darkness when the ship crept softly along.

If one came in near the shore it was like the blast of a furnace. Then, passing the equator with the queer ceremony among the sailors, and looking across at the little neck of land joining the two countries, past Central America, which the little girl insisted made three Americas. She had listened to the tales of the early explorers and their cruel lust for gold until she had shuddered.

"Uncle Jason, are you going for gold in California, and will the people murder whole nations and rob them? I would rather not have the gold."

"No, my little girl; and the country that has the gold belongs to us. But it has many other delightful things as well. It is not like bleak Maine."

"What a strange journey it has been, and oh, how beautiful most of the time. I do not believe I shall ever be afraid of storms again."

"You have made a most excellent sailor. It will seem queer to be on land again. You will keep your sea legs for some time to come."

"Sea legs?" She laughed inquiringly.

"The faculty one acquires of walking with the roll of the ship. Sailors always do it on land. And you will see that you have an inclination to go from side to side as if the street was hardly wide enough;" and he looked at her out of humorous eyes.

He had a way of nearly shutting one eye, which gave an absolutely funny expression to his face. He had buffeted so many storms and narrow escapes that he looked fully ten years beyond his age, which was but thirty-five. He had a tall, vigorous frame, with a little stoop in the shoulders and a way of sitting down all in a heap. The little girl told him he made a cave for her to sit in. Every day she loved him more dearly, and to him she was the one thing that brightened his way and gave him new aims. He had been going to California simply to see a strange and new land. He had not been won by the wonderful tales of gold, he had cared very little for wealth. But now he would make a fortune for her and have it so safely invested that she should not come to want if she lived to be old. He could never forget the afternoon he had come to Laverne Westbury's home, that she had been warned to leave in the spring, and found her almost on the verge of starvation, too proud to keep asking charity, worn out and disheartened, with only the county house looming before her. Little Verne should never know this, never suffer as her mother had done.

And this was one reason he led her thoughts away from the old life. She was too young to know that he had loved her mother, she took the relationship for granted. And even on the long voyage there had been so much to entertain her. The only child on board, and a winsome one at that, she had been a universal favorite; and Jason Chadsey hardly less so. The trio, as the three single women had been dubbed, though the married ones often said "the old maids," after a little, established very friendly relations with Mr. Chadsey. Miss Holmes was past thirty, and had worn herself almost out teaching school. A sea voyage had been prescribed to avoid consumption, that scourge of the eastern towns. She had gained in health and strength, and certainly in looks. When she found the little girl and her uncle poring over their old map, she brought out some of her school books, to Laverne's great delight. Among them was the story of the Argonauts that caught the young imagination, and even Dick Folsom became interested in the various explorers who had dreamed of gold and of the straight route to China. Miss Gaines had been a dressmaker until a troublesome pain in her side warned her to seek a different occupation, and Miss Alwood had kept house, done nursing, and they had planned to make better fortunes in the new country, where there were fewer women. Mrs. Dawson was going out to meet her husband, who had been among the "Forty-miners," and now kept a sort of lodging ranch, that with her help could be transformed into a regular hotel, much in demand at that time.

And so they had made quite a little colony on shipboard. Slowly they came up the Pacific Coast, past the long peninsula of Southern California, and there, fairly in sight, was the Golden Gate.