st "haunted
Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having
put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.

James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the
solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would
look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white.
James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took
to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of
low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his
exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. The grave was not
difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things
white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.

* * * * *

And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got
the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's _your_
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He,
getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "Deed,
sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he did na exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain
him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss
wi' the mear, and wad na come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but
he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was
aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make
awa wi' the auld dowg, his like was na atween this and Thornhill,--but,
'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab,
quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep
the peace, and be civil?

VIII. THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT[*] (1869)

[* Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, publishers of Bret Harte's Works.]

BY BRET HARTE (1836-1902)

[_Setting_. The group tragedy enacted in this story took place between
November 23 and December 7, 1850, on the road from Poker Flat to Sandy
Bar, in Sierra County, California. The time and place are those that
Bret Harte has made peculiarly his own. The austerity and wildness of