bull-dog and began to look down the hill in the darkness.

A man leaned over the fence and laughed in his face. "Now don't do that,
Sandy! now don't." Sandy let his pistol fall half ashamed; for it was
the voice of a friend.

"Good-bye, Sandy!" the man called back up the trail in the dark.
"Good-bye. That's for the Widder. Made my pile and off for Pike.
Good-bye!"

When Washee-Washee went out next morning for wood, there he found lying
at the door the cause of the trouble in the night. It was a great nugget
of gold that the rough Missourian had thrown to his patron saint as he
passed.

Once a miner sent them a great fine salmon. The Widow on opening it
found it half full of gold. She took all this back to the man, whom she
found seated at the green table at the Howling Wilderness, behind a
silver faro box; for to mining the man also attached the profession of
gambler. She laid this heap of gold down on the table before the man
with the faro box and cards. The miners gathered around. The man with
the silver box began to deal his cards.

"All on the single turn, Missus Sandy?"

The Judge came forward, "Don't bet it all on the first deal, do you?
That's pretty steep, even for the oldest of us!"

"Bet! I don't bet at all. I bring Poker Jake his money back. I found
this all in the fish he sent us. It is his. It is a trick, perhaps. Fish
don't eat gold, you know."

"O yes they dus, Missus Sandy."

Poker Jake stopped with the card half turned in the air. The Widow held
up her pretty finger and her pretty lips pouted as she made her little
speech to the gambler, and told him she could not keep the gold. The
miners gathered around in wonder and admiration.

Jake laid down his card.

"Well, can't a salmon eat gold if he likes?"

"No."

"There, Missus Sandy, y'er wrong!" argued the little Judge, and then he
began to tell her the story of Jonah and the whale, and wound up with
the declaration that there was nothing at all unnatural in a fish eating
gold in "this glorious climate of Californy."

"Will you not take back your gold?"

"Nary a red."

There was a pale thoughtful young man, half ill, too feeble to work, to
leave, to retreat from the mountains, standing by the fire when the
Widow had entered the saloon. It was the boy poet.

She took up the bag of gold, turned around, looked back in the corner of
the saloon, for he had retreated out of sight as she entered, saw the
young man hiding back in the shade