sy
laugh.

"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."
Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the
Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his
head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already
gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.
Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her
preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the
hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach, or
the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately prompted her. She
was so far away at one time that the stage-coach, which finally drew up
before Mulrady, was obliged to wait for her.

When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to the
box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,--

"Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."

"Ez how?"

"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at just
this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your attitude, was
a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let him in, when,
darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without
speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that
idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong
English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next morning, when I
came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all
of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops down and picks him up. Doctor
Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a played-out prospector, with a
big case of paralysis, and we expressed him through to the County
Hospital, like so much dead freight. I've allus been kinder
superstitious about passin' that rock, and when I saw you jist now,
sittin' thar, dazed like, with your head down like the other chap, it
rather threw me off my centre."

In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this
coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on
the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to
prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in time.

"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger. "Did you
ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.

With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver
resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my
cussin' a h