tory lying beyond.

"Oh! morther, wot nixt?" exclaimed Larry.

Well might he inquire, for this man, having combed his hair with a
public comb, which was attached to the door-post by a string, and
examined himself carefully in a bit of glass, about two inches in
diameter, proceeded to cleanse his teeth with a _public tooth-brush_
which hung beside the comb. All these articles had been similarly used
by a miner ten minutes previously; and while this one was engaged with
his toilet, another man stood beside him awaiting his turn!

"W'en yer in difficulties," remarked Bill Jones, slowly, as he entered
the ranche, and proceeded to fill his pipe, "git out of 'em, if ye can.
If ye can't, why wot then? circumstances is adwerse, an' it's o' no use
a-tryin' to mend 'em. Only my sentiments is, that I'll delay washin'
till I comes to a river."

"You've come from San Francisco, stranger?" said a rough-looking man, in
heavy boots, and a Guernsey shirt, addressing Captain Bunting.

"Maybe I have," replied the captain, regarding his interrogator through
the smoke of his pipe, which he was in the act of lighting.

"Goin' to the diggin's, I s'pose?"

"Yes."

"Bin there before?"

"No."

"Nor none o' your party, I expect?"

"None, except one."

"You'll be goin' up to the bar at the American Forks now, I calc'late?"

"Don't know that I am."

"Perhaps you'll try the northern diggin's?"

"Perhaps."

How long this pertinacious questioner might have continued his attack on
the captain is uncertain, had he not been suddenly interrupted by the
announcement that supper was ready, so he swaggered off to the corner of
the hut where an imposing row of bottles stood, demanded a
"brandy-smash," which he drank, and then, seating himself at the table
along with the rest of the party, proceeded to help himself largely to
all that was within his reach.

The fare was substantial, but not attractive. It consisted of a large
junk of boiled salt beef, a mass of rancid pork, and a tray of broken
ship-biscuit. But hungry men are not particular, so the viands were
demolished in a remarkably short space of time.

"I'm a'most out o' supplies," said the host, in a sort of apologetic
tone, "an' the cart I sent down to Sacramento some weeks ago for more's
not come back."

"Better than nothin'," remarked a bronzed, weatherbeaten hunter, as he
helped himself to another junk of pork. "If ye would send out yer boy
into the hills with a rifle