to kill. He knew some of the officials
in a friendly way, and was advised to give a straw bond and go into
temporary retirement. Clemens, of course, went his bail, and Steve set
out for Virginia City, until the storm blew over.

This was Burke's opportunity. When the case was called and Gillis did
not appear, Burke promptly instituted an action against his bondsman,
with an execution against his loose property. The watch that had been
given him as Governor of the Third House came near being thus sacrificed
in the cause of friendship, and was only saved by skilful manipulation.

Now, it was down in the chain of circumstances that Steve Gillis's
brother, James N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted hermit, a pocket-miner of the
halcyon Tuolumne district--the Truthful James of Bret Harte--happened to
be in San Francisco at this time, and invited Clemens to return with
him to the far seclusion of his cabin on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful
retreat were always rest and refreshment for the wayfarer, and more
than one weary writer besides Bret Harte had found shelter there.
James Gillis himself had fine literary instincts, but he remained a
pocket-miner because he loved that quiet pursuit of gold, the Arcadian
life, the companionship of his books, the occasional Bohemian pilgrim
who found refuge in his retreat. It is said that the sick were made
well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis's cabin on the hilltop,
where the air was nectar and the stillness like enchantment. One
could mine there if he wished to do so; Jim would always furnish him a
promising claim, and teach him the art of following the little fan-like
drift of gold specks to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up
the hillside. He regularly shared his cabin with one Dick Stoker (Dick
Baker, of 'Roughing It'), another genial soul who long ago had retired
from the world to this forgotten land, also with Dick's cat, Tom Quartz;
but there was always room for guests.

In 'Roughing It', and in a later story, "The Californian's Tale," Mark
Twain has made us acquainted with the verdant solitude of the Tuolumne
hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise where once a vast population had
gathered when placer-mining had been in its bloom, a dozen years before.
The human swarm had scattered when the washings failed to pay, leaving
only a quiet emptiness and the few pocket-miners along the Stanislaus
and among the hills. Vast areas of that section present a strange
appearance to-day