and threatened by high water,
Simpson's Bar, on the eve of Christmas day, 1862, clung like a swallow's
nest to the rocky entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain,
and shook in the blast.

As night shut down on the settlement, a few lights gleamed through
the mist from the windows of cabins on either side of the highway now
crossed and gullied by lawless streams and swept by marauding winds.
Happily most of the population were gathered at Thompson's store,
clustered around a red-hot stove, at which they silently spat in some
accepted sense of social communion that perhaps rendered conversation
unnecessary. Indeed, most methods of diversion had long since been
exhausted on Simpson's Bar; high water had suspended the regular
occupations on gulch and on river, and a consequent lack of money and
whiskey had taken the zest from most illegitimate recreation. Even Mr.
Hamlin was fain to leave the Bar with fifty dollars in his pocket,--the
only amount actually realized of the large sums won by him in the
successful exercise of his arduous profession. "Ef I was asked," he
remarked somewhat later,--"ef I was asked to pint out a purty little
village where a retired sport as didn't care for money could exercise
hisself, frequent and lively, I'd say Simpson's Bar; but for a young man
with a large family depending on his exertions, it don't pay." As Mr.
Hamlin's family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark is quoted
rather to show the breadth of his humor than the exact extent of his
responsibilities.

Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in the
listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement. Even the
sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse them. Dick
Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted
his head, but no other one of the group indicated any interest in, or
recognition of, the man who entered.

It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's
Bar as "The Old Man." A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant
of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of
ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude
for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He
had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first
notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest
man jocularly, and threw himself into a vac