furder goin' down to work than it would be comin' up fer a
drink, besides bein' down-grade. I lay out to quit workin' some o' these
days, but I don't never lay out to quit drinkin'."

This latter determination on Parker's part had come to be pretty well
understood, and the former would have obtained ready credence except for
the fact that one cannot very well quit what he has never begun. Without
risking the injustice of the statement that Parker was lazy, it is
perhaps safe to say that he belonged by nature to the leisure class,
and doubtless felt the accident of his birth even more keenly than the
man of unquenchable industry who finds himself born to wealth and
idleness. "Holdin' down a claim" had proved an occupation as well
adapted to his tastes as anything that had ever fallen to his lot, and
his bachelor establishment among the boulders was managed with an
economy of labor, and a resultant of physical comfort, hitherto unknown
in the annals of housekeeping. The house itself was of unsurfaced
redwood, battened with lath to keep out the winter rain. The furniture
consisted of a wide shelf upon which he slept, two narrower ones which
held the tin cans containing his pantry stores, a bench, a table which
"let down" against the wall by means of leathern hinges when not in use,
a rusty stove, and a much-mended wooden chair. From numerous nails in
the wall smoky ends of bacon were suspended by their original hempen
strings, and the size of the grease-spot below testified to the length
of the "side" which Parker had carried in a barley sack from Barney
Wilson's store at Elsmore, five miles away on the other side of the
lake. Parker surveyed these mural decorations with deep, inward
satisfaction not untinged with patriotism.

"There wa'n't many folks right here when I filed on to this claim," he
had been known to remark, "an' I may have trouble provin' up. But if the
Register of the General Land-Office wants to come an' take a look, he
c'n figger up from them ends o' bacon just about how long I've lived
here, an' satisfy himself that I've acted fair with the gover'ment,
which I've aimed to do, besides makin' all these improvements."

The improvements referred to were hardly such as an artist would have so
designated, but Parker surveyed them with taste and conscience void of
offense. The redwood shanty; a dozen orange-trees, rapidly diminishing
in size and number by reason of neglect and gophers; a clump of slender,
sm