Anything like the absolute prepossession of Captain Jim by this
stranger we had never imagined. He approached us running a little
ahead of his guest, and now and then returning assuringly to his side
with the expression of a devoted Newfoundland dog, which in fluffiness
he generally resembled. And now, even after the introduction was over,
when he made a point of standing aside in an affectation of
carelessness, with his hands in his pockets, the simulation was so
apparent, and his consciousness and absorption in his friend so
obvious, that it was a relief to us to recall him into the conversation.

As to our own first impressions of the stranger, they were probably
correct. We all disliked him; we thought him conceited,
self-opinionated, selfish, and untrustworthy. But later, reflecting
that this was possibly the result of Captain Jim's over-praise, and
finding none of these qualities as yet offensively opposed to our own
selfishness and conceit, we were induced, like many others, to forget
our first impressions. We could easily correct him if he attempted to
impose upon US, as he evidently had upon Captain Jim. Believing, after
the fashion of most humanity, that there was something about US
particularly awe-inspiring and edifying to vice or weakness of any
kind, we good-humoredly yielded to the cheap fascination of this showy,
self-saturated, over-dressed, and underbred stranger. Even the epithet
of "blower" as applied to him by Rowley had its mitigations; in that
Trajan community a bully was not necessarily a coward, nor florid
demonstration always a weakness.

His condemnation of the gulch was sweeping, original, and striking. He
laughed to scorn our half-hearted theory of a gold deposit in the bed
and bars of our favorite stream. We were not to look for auriferous
alluvium in the bed of any present existing stream, but in the "cement"
or dried-up bed of the original prehistoric rivers that formerly ran
parallel with the present bed, and which--he demonstrated with the stem
of Pickney's pipe in the red dust--could be found by sinking shafts at
right angles with the stream. The theory was to us, at that time,
novel and attractive. It was true that the scientific explanation,
although full and gratuitous, sounded vague and incoherent. It was
true that the geological terms were not always correct, and their
pronunciation defective, but we accepted such extraordinary discoveries
as "ignus fatuus rock," "s