Inwood thanked him, but assured him that he needed nothing. He felt that he could not receive any more favors at the hand of one who had already done so much.
On the following day, when the Golden Gate turned her head down the Atlantic, and steamed swiftly toward her distant destination, she carried with her the brothers Inwood, and the colossal African, Jim Tubbs.
CHAPTER IV.
There was a strong attraction which drew George Inwood toward the golden sands of California, to which we have not even hinted thus far; but it is high time it received notice.
Several years before, when the young student had just entered college, he was descending the Hudson in the ill-fated Henry Clay. On board, he formed the acquaintance of the most engaging young lady he had ever met. Intellectual, vivacious and accomplished, he felt strengthened mentally and morally when he left her presence—a condition far different from that in which one is sure to vacate the society of nine-tenths of the fashionable women of the present time.
A mutual interest sprang up between the two, and everything was progressing delightfully toward a tenderer state of feeling, when that well-remembered calamity burst upon the doomed steamer. In the confusion and tumult, Inwood, who was an excellent swimmer, became the means of saving Miss Marian Underwood and her father from death by drowning.
There can be but little doubt of the result of all this, had matters been left to take their natural course, but Inwood had just entered college, and the next tidings that reached him relating to the Underwoods was, that the father, who was quite wealthy, had removed to California, and settled quite a distance to the south of San Francisco. After deliberating a long time upon the matter, he addressed a respectful but friendly letter to Marian, and then anxiously awaited the reply; but it never came, and, concluding that her hand was pre-engaged, he did not repeat the experiment, and did his best to forget her.
Absorbed in his studies and preparations for his sacred calling, he succeeded, not in forgetting her, but in preventing her occupying his thoughts so prominently, although this would have been impossible, had he known that the letter so carefully written had never reached its intended destination, and that the fair Miss Underwood often wondered and as often sighed that he did not seem to deem her worth the trouble of a letter.