The Project Gutenberg EBook of Drift from Two Shores, by Bret Harte

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Title: Drift from Two Shores

Author: Bret Harte

Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2179]
Release Date: May, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES ***

DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES

by

BRET HARTE

CONTENTS

THE MAN ON THE BEACH
TWO SAINTS OF THE FOOT-HILLS
"JINNY"
ROGER CATRON'S FRIEND
"WHO WAS MY QUIET FRIEND?"
A GHOST OF THE SIERRAS
THE HOODLUM BAND
THE MAN WHOSE YOKE WAS NOT EASY
MY FRIEND, THE TRAMP
THE MAN FROM SOLANO
THE OFFICE SEEKER
A SLEEPING-CAR EXPERIENCE
MORNING ON THE AVENUE
WITH THE ENTREES

DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES

THE MAN ON THE BEACH

I

He lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow
strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high
tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast-up offerings
of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland
banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken
into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long
successive curves,--the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high
noon the shadow of a seagull's wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall
of sandpipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the
monotonous glare of the level sands.

He had lived there alone for a twelvemonth. Although but a few miles
from a thriving settlement, during that time his retirement had never
been intruded upon, his seclusion remained unbroken. In any other
community he might have been the subject of rumor or criticism, but the
miners at Camp Rogue and the traders at Trinidad Head, themselves
individual and eccentric, were profoundly indifferent to all other
forms of eccentricity or heterodoxy that did not come in contact with
their own. And certainly there was no form of eccentricity less
aggressive than that of a hermit, had they chosen to give him that
appellation. But they did not even do that, probably from lack of
interest or perception. To the various traders who sup