e hardest place I ever struck. I saw two men killed
to-day in a gambling fight." Men engaged at their work or passing
along the streets were quite often compelled to duck and dodge to
escape sudden fusillades of bullets. There was little regard for the
law, and "killings" seldom received legal punishment.

Virginia City, despite its desolate environment of grey, naked
mountains and deep, narrow ravines, had its own rugged charm. The air
was so crystal-pure that at times one could see as far as one hundred
and eighty miles from its lofty seat on the skirts of Mount Davidson.
Far to the west and south stretched a wonderful panorama of
multicoloured and snow-capped mountains, and in the gap between lay
the desert and a fringe of green to mark the course of the Carson
River. The town, which lay immediately over the famous Comstock Lode,
was built on ground with such a pitch that what was the second story
of a house in front became the first in the back. Every winter snow
falls to a depth of several feet in the town, and on the summit of
Mount Davidson it never melts. At that time Virginia City was
described as "a lively place, wherein all kinds of industry as well as
vice flourished."

After their arrival here Samuel Osbourne bought the Mills, Post, and
White mine, and in the interval of waiting for results worked, like
the resourceful American that he was, at various employments to earn
a living for himself and his family. For a time he was clerk of the
Justice's Court in Virginia City.

It was even so early as in these Nevada mining days that the grey
cloud which was to darken some of the best years of her life first
appeared above the young wife's horizon, for it was there that the
first foreboding came to her that her marriage was to be a failure.
The wild, free life of the West had carried her young and
impressionable husband off his feet, and the painful suspicion now
came to her that she did not reign alone in his heart. As time passed
this trouble went from bad to worse, but no more need be said of it at
this point except to make it clear that years before her meeting with
the true love of her heart, Robert Louis Stevenson, the disagreements
which finally resulted in the shattering of her first romance had
already begun.

In 1866, lured by reports of rich strikes in Montana, Osbourne set off
on a prospecting tour to the Coeur d'Alene Mountains, leaving his wife
and child in Virginia City. While in Montana he me