About this time he fell ill; or at least the report ran that he was ill.
Sandy was absent on business in the valley below.

One evening the Widow was seen to enter his cabin. The camp was
indignant. There were now many women in the place, and her actions did
not pass unobserved.

The next day the woman, the leader of society in the little mountain
metropolis, cut the Widow in the street, or rather on the hill-side, for
the mining town had passed away, and there was no street now.

Two sun-bonnets, made of paste-board and calico, that reached far out
over the faces of the wearers, like the cover of a pedler's wagon, met
that afternoon on the hill-side.

"It's awful!"

"It's just awful!"

The two covered wagons were poked up close against each other.

"She staid all night!"

"She staid with him till daylight!"

"I will cut her."

"I have cut her."

The two covered wagons parted and passed on.

You remember Deboon? Well, let us see how the California gold mines
treated some of the bold fellows who once courted fortune nearly a
quarter of a century ago in the Sierras. These mines were great mills.
They ground men, soul and body, to powder. Time, like a great river,
turned the stones, and this man, like thousands and thousands of others,
was ground down to nothing.

Twenty years had now passed. Twenty terrible years, in which this brave
and resolute man had dared more than Caesar, had endured more than Ney;
and he now found that the entire end of his father's name had been,
somewhere in the Sierras, worn or torn away, and hid or covered up for
ever in the tailings. He was now nothing but "Bab." While
ground-sluicing one night, and possibly wondering what other deduction
could be made and not leave him nameless, he was caught in a cave,
sluiced out, and carried head-first through the flume.

This last venture wore him down to about the condition of an old
quarter-coin, where neither date, name, nor nationality can be
deciphered. His jaws were crushed, and limbs broken, till they lay in
every direction, like the claws of a sea-crab.

They took him to the County Hospital, and there they called him "Old
Bab." It was a year before he got about; and then he came leaning on a
staff, with a frightful face. He had lost all spirit. He sat moodily
about the hospital, and sometimes said bitter things.

One day he said of Grasshopper Jim, who was a great talker, "That man
must necessarily lie. There is not truth eno