that which I have just
recounted.

At the commencement of our first storm, a hard-working, industrious
laborer, who had accumulated about eight hundred dollars, concluded to
return to the States. As the snow had been falling but a few hours when
he, with two acquaintances, started from Rich Bar, no one doubted that
they would not reach Marysville in perfect safety. They went on foot
themselves, taking with them one mule to carry their blankets. For some
unexplained reason, they took an unfrequented route. When the
expressman came in, he said that he met the two companions of R. eight
miles beyond Buck's Rancho, which is the first house one finds after
leaving Rich Bar, and is only fourteen miles distant from here.

These men had camped at an uninhabited cabin called the "Frenchman's,"
where they had built a fire and were making themselves both merry and
comfortable. They informed the expressman that they had left their
_friend_ (?) three miles back, in a dying state; that the cold had been
too much for him, and that no doubt he was already dead. They had
brought away the money, and even the _blankets_, of the expiring
wretch! They said that if they had stopped with him they would have
been frozen themselves. But even if their story is true, they must be
the most brutal of creatures not to have made him as comfortable as
possible, with _all_ the blankets, and, after they had built their fire
and got warm, to have returned and ascertained if he were really dead.

On hearing the expressman's report, several men who had been acquainted
with the deceased started out to try and discover his remains. They
found his violin, broken into several pieces, but all traces of the
poor fellow himself had disappeared, probably forever.

In the mean while some travelers had carried the same news to Burke's
Rancho, when several of the residents of that place followed the two
men, and overtook them, to Bidwell's Bar, where they had them arrested
on suspicion of murder. They protested their innocence, of course, and
one of them said that he would lead a party to the spot where they had
left the dying man. On arriving in the vicinity of the place, he at
first stated that it was under one tree, then another, and another, and
at last ended by declaring that it was utterly impossible for him to
remember where they were camped at the time of R.'s death.

In this state of things, nothing was to be done but to return to B.'s,
when, the excite