He remembered
how he had worshiped him even while the pious padres at San Jose were
endeavoring to eliminate this terrible poison from his blood and combat
his hereditary instinct in his conflicts with his school-fellows. And it
was a part of this inconsistency that, riding away from the scene of his
first bloodshed, his eyes were dimmed with moisture, not for his victim,
but for the one being who he believed had impelled him to the act.
This and more was in his mind during his long ride to Fair Plains, his
journey by coach to the Embarcadero, his midnight passage across the
dark waters of the bay, and his re-entrance to San Francisco, but what
should be his future was still unsettled.
As he wound round the crest of Russian Hill and looked down again upon
the awakened city, he was startled to see that it was fluttering and
streaming with bunting. From every public building and hotel, from
the roofs of private houses, and even the windows of lonely dwellings,
flapped and waved the striped and starry banner. The steady breath of
the sea carried it out from masts and yards of ships at their wharves,
from the battlements of the forts Alcatraz and Yerba Bueno. He
remembered that the ferryman had told him that the news from Fort Sumter
had swept the city with a revulsion of patriotic sentiment, and that
there was no doubt that the State was saved to the Union.
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