ain't I a right to sit 'round this Plaza?" The man pulled himself
free and again defied the officer of the law with a clenched fist.
"Didn't I help make it? When you were playing with a rattle in your crib
over in Dublin, I was a-stringing up a man to the eaves of the old
Custom House over there on the corner. And now you try to arrest me--me
a Vigilante of '51--" His fury choked him, and with a quick turn of the
hand, the officer again had him by the collar. But the old man wrenched
himself loose.

"You keep your hands off me." He raised his angry voice in warning. Then
drawing a bundle of papers from his pocket he thrust them into the
officer's face. "Look at that--and that--and that--biggest business
blocks in San Francisco. If I choose to wear a loose shirt and sit
'round the Plaza it isn't any business of yours. In the good old days of
forty-nine--"

I touched the Bostonian on the arm. "Let's go to the Exposition," I
suggested. "We've seen everything here."

"There's no need to hurry! We've all the afternoon before us." He edged
a little closer to the old man, about whom a crowd was gathering.

"In the good old days of forty-nine," rang out again and I glanced
nervously at my companion. "We didn't have any dipper-dapper policemen
making mistakes." He snapped his fingers in the officer's face. "We had
good red-shirted miners who knew their business."

The policeman moved uneasily and handed back the papers. "I guess
they're all right," he acknowledged. "The law doesn't seem to touch
you."

"Touch me! Well, I guess not!" The officer moved off and the old man
returned to his bench. Before I realized my companion's intention, we
were seated beside the miner. He was still muttering maledictions on the
head of the Irish policeman.

"The scoundrel!" He dug his stick into the gravel path. "Had the nerve
to arrest me! Me, who strung up Jenkins in the first Vigilante
Committee, and Casey and Cora in the second."

"You must have come here in early days," remarked the Bostonian.

"Early days," echoed the miner, "well, I guess I did. I'm a
forty-niner." He straightened himself proudly and looked to see the
effect of his words.

"I think we had better go." Again I touched the Antiquary's arm but he
gave no heed to my signal.

"There must have been some stirring times here in the days of the gold
rush."

"You bet there were," agreed the forty-niner, "and the entire history of
San Francisco was made around this Pla