hat supported the hotel, a
blue-shirted miner swung round the corner, and the two went indoors for
a drink. A girl came out of the only other house but one, and shading
her eyes with a brown hand stared at the panting train. She didn't
recognise me, but I knew her--had known her for years. She was M'liss.
She never married the schoolmaster, after all, but stayed, always young
and always fair, among the pines. I knew Red-Shirt too. He was one of
the bearded men who stood back when Tennessee claimed his partner from
the hands of the Law. The Sacramento River, a few yards away, shouted
that all these things were true. The train went on while Baby Sylvester
stood on his downy head, and M'liss swung her sun-bonnet by the strings.

"What do you think?" said a lawyer who was travelling with me. "It's a
new world to you; isn't it?"

"No. It's quite familiar. I was never out of England; it's as if I saw
it all."

Quick as light came the answer: "'Yes, they lived once thus at Venice
when the miners were the kings.'"

I loved that lawyer on the spot. We drank to Bret Harte who, you
remember, "claimed California, but California never claimed him. He's
turned English."

Lying back in state, I waited for the flying miles to turn over the
pages of the book I knew. They brought me all I desired--from the Man of
no Account sitting on a stump and playing with a dog, to "that most
sarcastic man, the quiet Mister Brown." He boarded the train from out of
the woods, and there was venom and sulphur on his tongue. He had just
lost a lawsuit. Only Yuba Bill failed to appear. The train had taken his
employment from him. A nameless ruffian backed me into a corner and
began telling me about the resources of the country, and what it would
eventually become. All I remember of his lecture was that you could
catch trout in the Sacramento River--the stream that we followed so
faithfully.

Then rose a tough and wiry old man with grizzled hair and made
inquiries about the trout. To him was added the secretary of a
life-insurance company. I fancy he was travelling to rake in the dead
that the train killed. But he, too, was a fisherman, and the two turned
to meward. The frankness of a Westerner is delightful. They tell me that
in the Eastern States I shall meet another type of man and a more
reserved. The Californian always speaks of the man from the New England
States as a different breed. It is our Punjab and Madras over again, but
more so. The o