easure-box
and mail-pouch. Be careful in handling that blunderbuss you keep
beside it; the last time it unfortunately went off, and I regret to say
slightly wounded one of your passengers. Accidents of this kind,
interfering, as they do, with the harmony and pleasure of our chance
meetings, cannot be too highly deplored."

"By gosh!" ejaculated an outside passenger in an audible whisper.

"Thank you, sir," said the voice quietly; "but as I overlooked you, I
will trouble you now to descend with the others."

The voice moved nearer; and, by the light of a flaming bull's-eye cast
upon the coach, it could be seen to come from a stout, medium-sized man
with a black mask, which, however, showed half of a smooth, beardless
face, and an affable yet satirical mouth. The speaker cleared his
throat with the slight preparatory cough of the practiced orator, and,
approaching the window, to Key's intense surprise, actually began in
the identical professional and rhetorical style previously indicated by
the miner.

"Circumstances over which we have no control, gentlemen, compel us to
oblige you to alight, stand in a row on one side, and hold up your
hands. You will find the attitude not unpleasant after your cramped
position in the coach, while the change from its confined air to the
wholesome night-breeze of the Sierras cannot but prove salutary and
refreshing. It will also enable us to relieve you of such so-called
valuables and treasures in the way of gold dust and coin, which I
regret to say too often are misapplied in careless hands, and which the
teachings of the highest morality distinctly denominate as the root of
all evil! I need not inform you, gentlemen, as business men, that
promptitude and celerity of compliance will insure dispatch, and
shorten an interview which has been sometimes needlessly, and, I regret
to say, painfully protracted."

He drew back deliberately with the same monotonous precision of habit,
and disclosed the muzzles of his confederates' weapons still leveled at
the passengers. In spite of their astonishment, indignation, and
discomfiture, his practiced effrontery and deliberate display appeared
in some way to touch their humorous sense, and one or two smiled
hysterically, as they rose and hesitatingly filed out of the vehicle.
It is possible, however, that the leveled shot-guns contributed more or
less directly to this result.

Two masks began to search the passengers under the combined foc