at all.

As was usual with these fallen angels, they kept the camp, or certain
elements in the camp, in a constant state of uproar, and contributed
more to the rapid filling-up of the new graveyard up on the hill than
all other causes put together. The fat and dirty little judge, who
really wanted to keep peace, and who felt that he must always give an
opinion, when asked why it was that the boys would fight so dreadfully
over these women, and kill each other, said, "It is all owing to this
glorious climate of Californy."

The truth is, they fought and killed each other, and kept up the regular
Sunday funeral all Summer through, not because these bad women were
there, but because the good women were not there. Yet possibly "the
glorious climate of Californy" had a bit to do with the hot blood of the
men, after all.

CHAPTER II.

LITTLE BILLIE PIPER.

Nobody knew when he came. Perhaps nobody cared. He was the smallest man
in the camp. In fact he was not a man. He was only a boyish,
girlish-looking creature that came and went at will. He was so small he
crowded no one, and so no one cried out about him, or paid him any
attention, so long as they were all busily taking possession of and
measuring off the new Eden.

What a shy, sensitive, girlish-looking man! His boyish face was
beautiful, dreamy and childish. It was sometimes half-hidden in a cloud
of yellow hair that fell down about it, and was always being pushed back
by a small white hand, that looked helpless enough, in the battle of
life among these bearded and brawny men on the edge of the new world.

He had a little bit of a cabin on the hill-side, not far way from the
Forks, and lived alone. This living alone was always rated to be a bad
sign. It was counted selfish. Few men lived alone in the mines. In fact
the cabins in the mines were generally jammed and crowded as tight with
men as if they had been little tin boxes packed with sardines.

When the bees in this new and busy hive began to settle down to their
work; when they in fact got a little of the hurry and flurry of their
own affairs a little off their minds, and they had a bit of time to look
into the affairs of others, they began to reflect that no man had ever
entered this little cabin.

Cabins in the mines in those days were generally open to all. "The latch
string," to use the expression of the Sierras, hung on the outside to
strangers. But this one peculiar cabin had no "latch-string