ntered the camp.

This is the caravan of the dead. No Chinaman will consent to let his
bones lie in the land of the barbarian. The bones of every Chinaman,
even to the beggar--if there ever was such a thing as a Chinese beggar
in California--are taken back to the land of his fathers.

Washee-Washee stood watching the train climb the corkscrew trail in the
gray dawn one morning, and then shaking his head he went to the Widow
and said--

"By'ee, by'ee. Washee-Washee allee samee."

And it was so. His first great commercial enterprise had been a
disastrous failure, and the brown little fellow never recovered. Other
Chinamen poured into camp, and he certainly had friends among them all,
but he went to none in his griefs as he did to the Widow; she who had
been his friend in his first great trouble.

The little brown man took to opium, and gradually grew almost black. His
little bright black eyes grew brighter, his thin face grew thinner, and
he became a little more than a shadow. Still he would smile a bit out of
that corner of his mouth. Would smile as if he was smiling at Death, and
was trying to cheat him into the idea that he felt perfectly well.

The caravan came in due time; as before, it rested, loaded, climbed the
hill, and as the train led up against the morning star, you might have
read on one little box, wherein a skeleton lay doubled up like a jack
knife, this name:

"WASHEE-WASHEE."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE END.

People began to remember that they had not seen their silent and
singular little poet since the death and burial of the Gopher.

Surely he was ill. At all events, the Widow went boldly and regularly
now to his cabin. And to the credit of the camp, be it said, it at last
began to look with toleration on these missions to the humble vine-clad
hermitage of the sad and lonesome little poet.

Only once more he came out and sat by the door, pale and dreamy and full
of mystery.

The schoolmaster, not an unkindly man, stopped a moment with his book
and slate under his arm, as he led a little girl by the hand, and
looking into the palid face before him, said:

"It is a hard old world, Billie. A hard old world. At best we have to
belabor the old earth; beat her to make her give us bread."

"Beat her!" The little thin hands clasped and lifted as if in prayer.
"Belabor my dear mother Earth? Why, she gave us birth, she gives us all
our bread, she gives us all that is beautiful and good. S