CHAPTER XXIV.

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

This was the song of the fat little Judge, one fine morning, as he wandered down towards the Howling Wilderness, sniffing the glorious balm, the very breath of the forest, and glancing ever and anon over his shoulder towards the cabin of Captain Tommy.

How new, and fresh and sweet, and fragrant the odors of the mighty, mossy woods that climbed and climbed and ever climbed as if to mount the summits, and push their tasselled tops against the indolent summer clouds that hovered like great white-winged birds above the peaks of snow. So new and fresh it seemed that summer morning, that the little Judge stopped on the hill-side and stood there to inhale its sweetness.

"How fresh and fine is this new world of Californy. It is only finished to-day. I can smell the varnish on it."

The Judge took out his great cotton bandanna, took off his hat, and polished his bald head till it shone in the sun like a mirror.

Then the little man stuffed his big handkerchief back in his bosom, and went on down the trail, humming softly to himself:

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

A man in great gum boots, duck breeches, a hat like a tent, with a gold pan under his arm and a pipe sticking out through a mask of matted beard, met the little man in the trail, heard his song as he passed, and looking back over his shoulder, said to himself: "The derned bald-headed old rooster! What's he a-singin' hymns fur now?"

The little Judge could not sit down in the saloon. He felt that something was the matter, and he thought that he was lonesome. The little brown mice upstairs could be heard all day now, for the miners were at work up to their thighs in the water, delving away there in their great gum boots as if they were in a sort of diving-bell.

So the Judge went away from the Howling Wilderness. There was no man to be found who had time to talk, and so he sought a woman.

Captain Tommy stood in the door of her cabin all untroubled. She had seen the little Judge approach, but she was too happy drinking in the great summer's day that filled all things with peace and a calm delight, and she did not stir.

There are days and occasions when even the most plain women are positively beautiful; and when a plain woman is beautiful she is the most beautiful thing in the world.

This was Captain Tommy's day to be beautiful, and perhaps she felt it, for there she stood, really playing the coquette, hardly turning her eyes to look on the little Alcalde, although she knew he was mad in love with her.

He stood before her in the sun with his hat in his hand. Then she looked into the polished mirror which he humbly bowed before her, and she saw that she was really beautiful.

"Captain," said the mirror, and it bowed still lower. "Lady, in this glorious climate of Californy, I have snatched a few moments from my professional duties to come to you, to say to you—to—to beg of you that you will—will you—in this glorious climate of Californy this morning?"

The mirror was close up under her eyes. She smiled, and then she lifted her two hands and began to wind herself up as fast as possible, so that she could answer the eager and earnest little man before her.

The Judge waited in an ecstacy of delight, for he knew by the twinkle in her eye that he should have to send for the black-clad man with the white necktie, who had so terrified the Parson, and he was very happy.

By slow degrees, no one knew just when or how, the boy-poet began to find his way back after a year or two to the Widow's cabin. The miners wondered that Sandy did not protest. They saw, with some alarm, that the Widow was even more kind to him than before. Was it the pale pleading face of the consumptive boy that moved her?

Years went by, and the chronicler stood again in the Forks. The town was gone; the miners had uprooted its very foundations. Then came floods and buried the boulders and the banks of the stream, and widened it out and made it even as a new-plowed field.

Then a man, the Hon. Mr. Sandy, who had sat down with his family quite satisfied in the Sierras, extended a fence around the site of the old city, and planted and sowed and then reaped the richest of harvests. On the site of the Howling Wilderness the yellow golden grain reached up till it touched the very beard of the giant. So do perish the mining towns of the Sierras.

The hills are not so wild now; the woods have been mown away, and up on the hill-sides the miners have sat down, old and wrinkled and few in numbers; and around their quiet old cabins have planted fruit trees, and trees even from the tropics. And these trees flourish here too, for though the snow falls deep, and the sun has little room between the walls of the mighty cañon, still it seems never now so bleak or cold.

There is one little house on the hill-side, with porches, and Spanish verandahs, and hammocks swinging there, and all that, nestled down among the fruit-trees that bend with fruit and blossom. Around this cabin and back of it, and up the mountains among the firs, you see pretty children passing in and out, laughing as they run, shouting like little Modocs, shaking back their hair all full of the gold and glory of the California sun, and making every one happy who beholds them.

"All in the glorious climate of Californy!" says the little man, as he comes puffing up the hill to his home, and the children of the First Families run to meet him.

Can it be possible? Did they all grow young again? Did they go back and begin life at the beginning? Truly, there is something in the climate, and the fountain of youth flows certainly somewhere out of the Sierras.

For look! there stands a woman winding herself up to welcome her husband; she is only a little stouter, and is even beautiful.

As for Limber Tim, being an "idecated man," he started a newspaper in the nearest town, and after many battles and many defeats, finally climbed high on the ladder of distinction, and is now "the Hon. Mr. Tim," with a political influence second in that part of the country to no man, and to only one woman.

How things are changed, to be sure! The caravans of clouds that little Billie Piper was wont to look up to and wonder at, still cross the cañon, and march and countermarch and curl about the far snow peaks as before. But the coyote has ceased to howl from the hill-side.

And what can that be curling like steam up from out the mighty forest that belts the snow peaks about the heads of the three little streams that make the Forks?

It looks like a train of clouds driven straight through the tree tops—it is so high and fairy-like and far away. It is as if it were on the very summit of the Sierras.

Ah! that is the engine blowing off the clouds of steam as she drops, shoots, slides, glides from the mountain to the sea. The train is a mile in length. The dust of three thousand miles is on her skirts. But before the going down of the sun she will draw rein to rest by the Golden Gate.

Stick a pin here. Be sure you remember that these settlers of the Sierras were as distinct a people from the settlers by the sea as you can conceive. The one was of the West, the other of the East. The one ate codfish and had a nasal accent and sang hymns. The other had never seen the ocean, he detested codfish, ate bacon and swore like a pirate.

Years went by and people, strangers, came and went, but our First Fam'lies of the Sierras remained.

This is history. The Phœnicians landed and left their impress on Ireland long before England heard of the first Cæsar. Their impetuous blood signalizes the Fenian of to-day.

The Pilgrim Fathers refused to return. A world of immigration flowed to and fro. But these few gave to the bleak and barren East the sharp nose, the nationality, good or bad, of the north of North America; while the few first settlers of the South gave spring to a current that will flow on for a thousand years.

I am all the time wondering when I think of the people of the Sierras, what women, or men and women, the traveler of a century hence will find there.

I think he will not find a coward or a miser. I think he will find a brave, generous, open-handed and unsuspicious people. A people full of freedom, of lofty aspiration, of purity, partaking of the awful sublimity that environs them.

And somewhere in these Sierras will they name the new Parnassus. The nine sisters, in the far New Day, will have their habitation here when the gold hunter has gone away, and the last pick lies rusting in the mine.

The sea of seas shall rave and knock at the Golden Gate, but this shall be the vine-land, the place of rest, that the old Greeks sought forever to find. This will be the land of eternal afternoon.

A land born of storm and rounded into shape by the blows of hardy and enduring men, it shall have its reaction—its rest.

The great singer of the future, born of the gleaming snows and the gloomy forests of the Sierras, shall some day swing his harp in the wind and move down these watered and wooded slopes to conquer the world with a song for Peace.

Now you would have me say that we never once sinned in this Eden of ours in the Sierras.

There is an old and a beautiful story. You knew it long before you learned to read. It was in that other Eden. There the living God spake face to face with man. He visited him every day in his own form. And yet he fell. We do not claim to be much better than they were in Eden, even in the Sierras.

The Forks, like every other place in the world, had its little center of Aristocracy. There was here, as in any other little community, one leading woman of fashion; the one tyrant who admitted this or that one to the Social Center. This woman, an ancient "School-marm," had firmly set her face against the Widow from the first. From this there was no appeal. The Widow was in disgrace. Still she refused to banish the boy-poet from her presence.

The old suspicion hung in the minds of the miners at the Forks. One day there were two old men, made mellow from the juice of grapes they had planted and grown on the hill-sides about their cabins, who grimly wagged their heads and looked wise at the mention of "the Widow," as she was still called, and sympathized with Sandy.

"Yes, pra'ps it was and pra'ps it wasn't," one would say as he thought of little "Half-a-pint," now a noisy little tom-boy filling the fir woods with laughter, "but then her having that 'ere poet about her all the time, that's what sticks in my crop."

"That's what sticks in my crop," echoes his fellow, as he pushes the bushy beard from his mouth and lifts his gourd of wine.

"The reputation of this ere camp," says another, as he sets down his empty gourd and lays his fore-finger in his palm, and settles his head wisely to one side, "the reputation of this ere camp depends on a havin' of this ere thing cleared up about the Widder."

"It looks pesky black," put in the other garrulous old woman in duck breeches, "'Cause why? she still sees him."

"And Sandy?"

Three old heads, helpless, good-natured old women, who had spent their manhood and their strength long before their grape-vines were growing on the hill-side, huddled close together in half maudlin conversation.

"Sandy!"

"He's a chuckle-headed old idiart."

"He's a gitten old and he can't help hisself."

"He's a gitten old."

"The chuckle-headed old idiart."

"Lookee here!"

An old forty-niner rose half way up, felt that his spine was not very reliable, and so spread out his two great hands on the two shoulders of his boon companion, and peered down in his face till their two beards, white as foam, almost flowed together.

"Let's run 'im out!"

At these words an old crippled man suddenly started up from his place back in the corner, and tottered forward to where the three old heads were huddled together.

"Run out Billie! Little Billie Piper, that never gits any older, never has a beard! that come here, that come—when did little Billie Piper come? Gintlemen, you listen to me. When you run out little Billie Piper, by God, you run him out over my bones!" And here the Gopher thundered his two fists down on to the pine-board table, and turning on his heel tottered out and up the hill-side to his cabin.

It is more than possible that we, in America, did once have a real Bourbon amongst us. If a Bonaparte could come and wed with us, and cast his fortune with us, why certainly a very heir to the crown of France might come and spend his life with us, live and die unknown. I don't know that we ever had any kings, or sons of kings, or daughters of kings, or any thing of the kind with us in the little Eden of the Sierras, but I do know that we had some odd men there, and some great men too, men that deserved to be kings, whatever they may have been.

And what they were, what they had been, no man ever knew. There was a truce to investigation. The family tree stood in the form of a sombre pine at each man's cabin door. That was enough. You could not go outside of the camp for inquiry. The eternal girdle of snow lifted its front in everlasting protest. How then shall I tell you who this silent widow that refused to go away, that refused to surrender, that refused to open her lips—how shall I tell you who she was, why she remained, or from whence she came?

As for Billie Piper, the majority of the camp of course had long settled down to the unalterable conviction that he remained for the love of the Widow. And the camp hated him for it. He was shunned, despised, for he did not look the man; he did not even act the man. When he was insulted he did not resent it. He only held his head at such times, gave the road to all, avoided all for weeks together, went on with his work in a feeble way, for he was very feeble now, and never made answer to any one.

About this time he fell ill; or at least the report ran that he was ill. Sandy was absent on business in the valley below.

One evening the Widow was seen to enter his cabin. The camp was indignant. There were now many women in the place, and her actions did not pass unobserved.

The next day the woman, the leader of society in the little mountain metropolis, cut the Widow in the street, or rather on the hill-side, for the mining town had passed away, and there was no street now.

Two sun-bonnets, made of paste-board and calico, that reached far out over the faces of the wearers, like the cover of a pedler's wagon, met that afternoon on the hill-side.

"It's awful!"

"It's just awful!"

The two covered wagons were poked up close against each other.

"She staid all night!"

"She staid with him till daylight!"

"I will cut her."

"I have cut her."

The two covered wagons parted and passed on.

You remember Deboon? Well, let us see how the California gold mines treated some of the bold fellows who once courted fortune nearly a quarter of a century ago in the Sierras. These mines were great mills. They ground men, soul and body, to powder. Time, like a great river, turned the stones, and this man, like thousands and thousands of others, was ground down to nothing.

Twenty years had now passed. Twenty terrible years, in which this brave and resolute man had dared more than Cæsar, had endured more than Ney; and he now found that the entire end of his father's name had been, somewhere in the Sierras, worn or torn away, and hid or covered up for ever in the tailings. He was now nothing but "Bab." While ground-sluicing one night, and possibly wondering what other deduction could be made and not leave him nameless, he was caught in a cave, sluiced out, and carried head-first through the flume.

This last venture wore him down to about the condition of an old quarter-coin, where neither date, name, nor nationality can be deciphered. His jaws were crushed, and limbs broken, till they lay in every direction, like the claws of a sea-crab.

They took him to the County Hospital, and there they called him "Old Bab." It was a year before he got about; and then he came leaning on a staff, with a frightful face. He had lost all spirit. He sat moodily about the hospital, and sometimes said bitter things.

One day he said of Grasshopper Jim, who was a great talker, "That man must necessarily lie. There is not truth enough in the United States to keep his tongue going for ever as it does."

One evening a young candidate told him he was going to make a speech, and very patronizingly asked him to come out and hear him. Old Bab looked straight at the wall, as if counting the stripes on the paper, then said, half to himself, "The fact of Balaam's ass making a speech has had a more demoralizing influence than any other event told in the Holy Bible; for ever since that time every lineal descendant seems determined to follow his example."

His face was never relieved by a smile, and his chin stuck out fearfully: so that one day, when Snapping Andy, who was licensed by the miners to be the champion growler of the camp, called him "Old Baboon," it was as complete as a baptismal ceremony, and he was known by no other name.

Some women visited him one evening; fallen angels—women with the trail of the serpent all over them. They gave him a pipe and money, and, above all, words of encouragement and kindness.

He moodily filled the meerschaum they had brought him, and after driving a volume of smoke through his nose, looked quietly up and said: "Society is wrong. These women are not bad women. For my part, I begin to find so much that is evil in that which the world calls good, and so much that is good in what the world calls evil, that I refuse to draw a distinction where God has not."

Then he fired a double-barrelled volley at society through his nose, and throwing out volume after volume of smoke as a sort of redoubt between himself and the world he hated, drifted silently into a tropical, golden land of dreams.

And do you remember the man they called The Gopher? Poor old Gopher! His was another story. He died before Baboon found his fortune, else they might have set up together, and behind their bull-dogs and grizzlies growled at the world a day or two with perfect satisfaction. But fate said otherwise.

The Gopher had always been misunderstood, even from the first. If the camp held him at arm's length in the old days, it, as a rule, shunned him now, when new men came in, and murder began to be a word with a terrible meaning, and even the good Widow almost forgot him.

The camp went down, and cabins were deserted by hundreds. But there was one cabin that was never vacant; it stood apart from town, on the brown hill-side, and as it was one of the first, so it promised to be the last of the camp. It always had an ugly bull-dog tied to the door—was itself a low, suspicious-looking structure that year by year sank lower as the grass grew taller around it, till it seemed trying to hide in the chaparral. It had but one occupant, a silent, selfish man, who never came out by day except to bury himself alone in his claim at work. Nothing was known of him at all, save the story that he had killed his partner in a gambling-house away back somewhere in '51. He was shunned and feared by all, and he approached and spoke to no one except the butcher, the grocer, and expressman; and to these only briefly, on business. I believe, however, that the old cripple, Baboon, sometimes sat on the bank and talked to the murderer at work in his claim. It was even said that Baboon was on fair terms with the dog at the door.

This solitary man of the savage dog was, as you guess, "The Gopher." That was not the name given him by his parents, but it was the name the camp had given him a generation before, and it was now the only name by which he was known. The amount of gold which he had hoarded and hidden away in that dismal old cabin, through years and years of incessant toil, was computed to be enormous.

Year after year the grass stole farther down from the hill-tops to which it had been driven, as it were, in the early settlement of the camp; at last it environed the few remaining cabins, as if they were besieged, and it stood up tall and undisturbed in the only remaining trail. Still regularly three times a day the smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin, and the bull-dog kept unbroken sentry at the door.

In the January spring that followed, the grass and clover crept down strong and thick from the hills, and spread in a pretty carpet across the unmeasured streets of the once populous and prosperous camp. Little gray horned toads sunned themselves on the great flat rocks that had served for hearth-stones, and the wild hop-vines clambered up and across the toppling and shapeless chimneys.

About this time a closely-contested election drew near. It was a bold and original thought of a candidate to approach the Gopher and solicit his vote. His friends shook their heads, but his case was desperate, and he ventured down upon the old gray cabin hiding in the grass and chaparral. The dog protested, and the office-seeker was proceeding to knock his ugly teeth down his throat with a pick-handle, when the door opened, and he found the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun in his face. The candidate did not stay to urge his claims, and the Gopher's politics remained a mystery.

Here in this land of the sun the days trench deep into the nights of northern countries, and birds and beasts retire before the sunset: a habit which the transplanted Saxon declines to adopt.

Some idlers sat at sunset on the verandah of the last saloon, looking down the gulch as the manzanita smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin.

There is an hour when the best that is in man comes to the surface; sometimes the outcroppings are not promising of any great inner wealth; but the indications, whatever they may be, are not false. It is dulse and drift coming to the surface when the storm of the day is over. Yet the best thoughts are never uttered; often because no fit words are found to array them in; oftener because no fit ear is found to receive them.

How lonesome it looked, that little storm-stained cabin thus alone, stooping down, hiding away in the long strong grass, as if half-ashamed of the mournful history of its sad and lonely occupant.

A sailor broke silence: "Looks like a Feejee camp on a South Sea island."

"Robinson Crusoe—the last man of the original camp—the last rose of Summer." This was said by a young man who had sent some verses to theHangtown Weekly.

"Looks to me, in its crow's nest of chaparral, like the lucky ace of spades," added a man who sat apart contemplating the wax under the nail of his right fore-finger.

The schoolmaster here picked up the ace of hearts, drew out his pencil and figured rapidly.

"There!" he cried, flourishing the card, "I put it an ounce a day for eighteen years, and that is the result." The figures astonished them all. It was decided that the old miser had at least a mule-load of gold in his cabin.

"It is my opinion," said the new Squire, who was small of stature, and consequently insolent and impertinent, "he had ought to be taken up, tried, and hung for killing his pardner in '51."

"The time has run out," said the Coroner, who now came up, adjusting a tall hat to which he was evidently not accustomed; "the time for such cases by the law made and provided has run out, and it is my opinion it can't be did."

Not long after this it was discovered that the Gopher was not at work. Then it came out that he was very ill, and that Old Baboon was seen to enter his cabin.

Early one frosty morning in the Fall following, Old Baboon sat by the door of the only saloon. He held an old bull-dog by a tow-string, and both man and dog were pictures of distress as they shivered from the keen cold wind that came pitching down from the snow-peaks. As a man approached, the man shivered till his teeth chattered, and clutching at the string, looked helplessly over his shoulder at the uncompromising bar-keeper, who had just arisen and opened the door to let out the bad odors of his den.

The dog shivered too, and came up and sat down close enough to receive the sympathetic hand of Old Baboon on his broad bowed head. This man was a relic and a wreck. More than twenty years of miner's life and labor in the mountains, interrupted of late only by periodical sprees governed in their duration solely by the results of his last "clean up," had made him one of a type of men known only to the Pacific.

True, he had failed to negotiate with the savage cinnamon-headed vendor of poison; but he was no beggar. It was simply a failure to obtain a Wall Street accommodation in a small way. I doubt if the bristled-haired bar-keeper himself questioned the honesty of Baboon. It was merely a question of ability to pay, and the decision of the autocrat had been promptly and firmly given against the applicant.

Perhaps, in strict justice to the red-haired wretch that washed his tumblers and watched for victims that frosty morning, I should state that appearances were certainly against Baboon.

You can with tolerable certainty, in the placer mines, tell how a miner's claim is paying by the condition and quality of his top-boots. Baboon had no boots, only a pair of slippers improvised from old rubbers, and between the top of these and the legs of his pantaloons there was no compromise across the naked, cold-blue ankles.

These signs, together with a buttonless blue shirt that showed his hairy bosom, a frightful beard and hair beneath a hat that drooped like a wilted palm-leaf, were the circumstantial evidences from which Judge Barkeep made his decision.

It would perhaps be more pleasant for us all if we could know that such men were a race to themselves; that they never saw civilization; that there never was a time when they were petted by pretty sisters, and sat, pure and strong, the central figures of Christian households; or at least we would like to think that they grew upon the border, and belonged there. But the truth is, very often, they came of the gentlest blood and life. The border man, born and bred in storms, never gets discouraged: it is the man of culture, refinement, and sensitive nature who falls from the front in the hard-fought battles of the West.

This man's brow was broad and full; had his beard and hair been combed and cared for, his head had looked a very picture. But after all, there was one weak point in his face. He had a small, hesitating nose.

As a rule, in any great struggle involving any degree of strategy and strength, the small nose must go to the wall. It may have pluck, spirit, refinement, sensitiveness, and, in fact, to the casual observer, every quality requisite to success; but somehow invariably at the very crisis it gives way.

Small noses are a failure. This is the verdict of history. Give me a man, or woman either, with a big nose—not a nose of flesh, not a loose flabby nose like a camel's lips, nor a thin, starved nose that the eyes have crowded out and forced into prominence, but a full, strong, substantial nose, that is willing and able to take the lead; one that asserts itself boldly between the eyes, and reaches up towards the brows, and has room enough to sit down there and be at home.

Give me a man, or woman either, with a nose like that, and I will have a nose that will accomplish something. I grant you that such a nose may be a knave; but it is never a coward nor a fool—never!

In the strong stream of miners' life as it was, no man could stand still. He either went up or down. The strong and not always the best went up. The weak—which often embraced the gentlest and sweetest natures—were borne down and stranded here and there all along the river.

I have noticed that those who stop, stand, and look longest at the tempting display of viands in cook-shop windows, are those that have not a penny to purchase with. Perhaps there was something of this nature in Old Baboon that impelled him to look again and again over his shoulder—as he clutched tighter to the tow-string—at the cinnamon-headed bottle-washer behind the bar.

A stranger stood before this man. He turned his eyes from the bar-keeper and lifted them helplessly to his.

"Charlie is dead."

"Charlie who? Who is 'Charlie'?"

"Charlie Godfrey, The Gopher, and here is his dog;" and as he spoke, the dog, as if knowing his master's name and feeling his loss, crouched close to the old man's legs.

A new commotion in camp.

Say what you will of gold, whenever any one shuts his eyes and turns for ever from it, as if in contempt, his name, for a day at least, assumes a majesty proportionate with the amount he has left behind and seems to despise.

The Coroner, who was a candidate for a higher office, marshalled the leading spirits, and proceeded to the cabin where the dead man lay. He felt that his reputation was at stake, and entering the cabin, said in a solemn voice: "In the name of the law, I take possession of this premisis." Some one at the door, evidently not a friend to the Coroner's political aspirations, called out: "O what a hat!" The officer was not abashed, but towered up till his tall hat touched the roof, and repeated, "In the name of the law, I take possession of these primesis." This time there was no response or note of derision, and it was quietly conceded that The Gopher and all his gold were in the hands of the Coroner.

The cabin was a true and perfect relic of what might, geologically speaking, be termed a "Period" in the plastic formation of the Republic. Great pine logs, one above the other, formed three of its walls; the fourth was made up by a fire-place, constructed of boulders and adobe. The bed had but one post; a pine slab, supported by legs set in the center of the earthen floor, formed a table; the windows were holes, chiseled out between the logs, that could be closed with wooden plugs in darkness or danger.

Let these cabins not be despised. Their builders have done more for the commerce of the world than is supposed.

It is to be admitted that the dead man did not look so terrible, even in death, as the mind had pictured him. His unclosed eyes looked straight at those who came only to reproach him, and wonder where his money was buried, till they were abashed.

Standing there, the jury, under direction of the Coroner, gave a verdict of "Death from general debility." Some one tried to bring the Coroner into contempt again, by afterwards calling attention to the fact that he had forgotten to swear the jury; but the officer replied, "It is not necessary in such cases by the law made and provided," and so was counted wise and correct.

They bore the body in solemn silence to the grave yard on the hill—may be a little nearer to heaven. "How odd, that nearly all grave yards are on a hill," said little Billie Piper once more. But he said it now to himself, for he stood alone. No one shook hands with him now. He had crept out of his bed to stand by his dead friend. The places of chief mourners were assigned to Baboon and the dog, and Billie Piper. Whether these places were given because Baboon and Billie were the only present friends of the deceased, or whether the dog quietly asserted a right that no one cared to dispute, is not certain. Most likely it was one of those things that naturally, and therefore correctly, adjust themselves.

When these bearded men in blue shirts rested their burden at the open grave, they looked at each other, and there was an unpleasant pause. Perhaps they thought of the Christian burial-service in other lands, and felt that something was wanting. At last Baboon stole up close to the head of the grave, hesitated, lifted and laid aside his old slouch hat, and looking straight down into the earth, said, in a low and helpless way:

"Earth to earth and dust to dust!"—hesitated again and then continued: "The mustard and the clover seed are but little things, and no man can tell the one from the other; yet bury them in the uttermost parts of the earth, and each will bring its kind perfect and beautiful,—and—and—man is surely more than a little seed—and—and;" here he quite broke down, and knelt and kissed the face of the dead.

The men looked away for a while, as if to objects in the horizon, and then, without looking at each other, or breaking silence, lowered the unshapely box, caught up the spades, and found a relief in heaping the grave.

Then the Coroner, as in duty bound, or, as he expressed it, "as required by the law in such cases made and provided," directed his attentions to a search for the buried treasure.

Yeast-powder boxes, oyster-cans, and sardine-boxes, old boots and quicksilver tanks, were carried out to the light and inspected, without results. "In the straw of the bunk," said the Coroner;—and blankets, bunk, and straw were carried out to the sun; but not an ounce of gold.

To make sure against intrusion of the ill-disposed, the unwearied Coroner slept on the spot. The next day the hearth was taken up carefully, piece by piece, but only crickets clad in black, and little pink-eyed mice met the eager eyes of the men. At last some one suggested that as the hard-baked earthen floor was the last place in which one would look for hidden treasures, that was probably the first and only place in which the Gopher had buried his gold.

The thought made the Coroner enthusiastic. He sent for picks, and, if we must tell the truth, and the whole truth, he sent for whisky also. By sunset the entire earthen floor had been dug to the depth of many feet, and emptied outside the door. Not a farthing's-worth of gold was found. The next day the chimney was taken down.

Lizards, dust of adobes, but nothing more. About this time, the memory of the man just taken to the hill was held in but little respect, and a good or bad name, so far as the over-zealous Coroner was concerned, depended entirely on the final results of the search.

But one more thing remained to be done; that was, to remove the cabin. Shingle by shingle, log by log, the structure was levelled. Wood-rats, kangaroo-mice, horned toads, a rattlesnake or two that had gone into winter-quarters under the great logs, and that was all. Not an ounce of gold was found in the last cabin of the Missouri camp.

The flat was then staked off as mining-ground by some enterprising strangers, and they began in the center to sluice it to the bed-rock. They sluiced up the gulch for a month, and then down the gulch for a month, until the whole hill-side was scalped, as it were, to the bone, and the treasure-hunters were bankrupt, but not even so much as the color of the dead man's gold was found.

The Forks was disgusted, and the Gopher was voted a worse man dead than living.

It began to be noticed, however, that Baboon had mended somewhat in his personal appearance since the death of the Gopher, and it was whispered that he knew where the treasure was.

Some even went so far as to say that he had the whole sum of it in his possession. "Some of these nights he'll come up a-missing," said the butcher, striking savagely at his steel across his block. In justice to The Forks it must be observed she was not without grounds to go upon in her suspicions. For was not Baboon near the man at his death? And if he could get his dog, why not get his gold also?

One night Baboon, holding tight to a tow-string, shuffled up to the stranger in the Saloon, and timidly plucking his sleeve, said:

"Going away, I hear?"

"Yes."

"To the States?"

"Yes."

"To Missouri?"

"May be."

"Well, then, look here: come with me!"—and with an old dog bumping his head against his heels, he led the way out the door down the gulch to the cabin. He pulled the latch-string, entered, and finally struck a light. Sticking the candle in a whisky-bottle that stood on a greasy table in the center of the earthen floor, he picked up the tow-string, and pointing to the bunk in the corner, they sat down together, and the old dog rested his nose between the old man's legs.

After looking about the cabin in nervous silence for a time, Baboon arose with a look of resolution, handed the man his string, stepped to a niche in the wall, and taking an old crevicing-knife, struck it in stoutly above the latch.

"This means something," said the man to himself; "here will be a revelation," and a vision of the Gopher's gold-bags crossed his mind with tempting vividness. After a while the old man came back, took up the whisky-bottle, removed the candle from its neck, and holding it up between his face and the light, which he held in the other hand, seemed to decide some weighty proposition by the run of the beads in the bottle, and then turned and offered it in silence.

As the stranger declined his kindness, he hurriedly took a long draught, replaced the candle, then came and sat down close at his side, took his string, and the old dog again thrust his nose between his knees.

"You see,"—and the man leaned over to the other, and began in a whisper and strangeness of manner that suggested that his mind was wandering,—"you see, we all came out here together: Godfrey, that's the Gopher; Wilson, that's Curly, and I. Things didn't go right with me there, after I came away, so I just let them drift here. Lost my 'grip,' as they say, didn't have any 'snap' any more, as people call it. Godfrey and Wilson got on very well, though, till Wilson was killed."

"Till the Gopher killed him?"

"Well, now, there's where it is," said Old Baboon, and he shuddered. The dog, too, seemed to grow nervous, and crowded his ugly head up tighter between the old man's legs.

"There's where it is. Godfrey did not kill Wilson. The Gopher did not kill Curly no more than did you. You see, Curly was young, and out here, he fell to gambling and taking a bit too much, and one night, when Godfrey tried to get him away from a game, a set of roughs got up a row, upset the table, and Curly got knifed by some one of the set, who made the row to get a grab at the money. Godfrey was holding the boy at the time to keep him from striking, for he was mad drunk.

"Poor Curly only said, 'Don't let them know it at home,' and died in his arms. Every body was stranger to every body then, and no one took stock in that which did not concern him. People said Godfrey was right—that it was a case of self-defense, and Godfrey never said a word, never denied he killed him, but went back to the cabin, and took possession of everything, and had it all his own way. He worked like a Chinaman, and never took any part in miners' meetings, or any thing of the kind, and people began to fear and shun him. By-and-by most of his old friends had gone; and he was only known as the Gopher."

Again Baboon paused, and the dog crept closer than before, as if he knew the name of his master.

Once more the man arose, lifted the candle, contemplated the beads in the bottle, as before, and returned. He did not sit down, but took up and pulled back the blankets at the end of the bunk.

"I thought as much," said the stranger to himself. "The gold is hidden in the straw."

"Look at them," said he; and he threw down a bundle of papers, and held down the dim candle.

There were hundreds of letters, all written in a fine steel-plate lady's hand. Some addressed to Godfrey, and some to Wilson. Now and then was one with a border of black, telling that some one at home no longer waited the return. "Come home, come home," was at the bottom of them all. One addressed to Wilson, of a recent date, thanked him with all a mother's and sister's tenderness for the money he had so constantly sent them through all the weary years.

"That was it, you see; that was it. As Godfrey, that's the Gopher, is dead, and can send them no more money, and as you was a-going to the States, I thought best that you should drop in and tell the two families gently, somehow, that they both are dead. Say that they died together. He sent them the last ounce he had the week before he died, and made me take these letters to keep them away from the Coroner, so that he might not know his address, and so that they might not know at home that Curly had died long ago, and died a gambler. Take one of the letters along, and that will tell you where they are."

Again Old Baboon resumed the tow-string. He looked toward the door, and when the man had stepped across the sill he put out the light, and the two stood together.

The old dog knew there was but the one place for his master outside his cabin at such a time, and, blind leading the blind, thither he led him through the dark to the saloon.

And whither went the Parson that cold blustering morning? He set his face against the snow and started out alone up the corkscrew trail to try to reach, no one knew where. Or did he try to reach any place at all? Did he not take this course so that he might leave the mind of the woman he had loved, free and careless of his fate?

Sandy had promised, and so he had led his new wife to the Parsonage, and taken possession as he had agreed. But rough as he was he often wished he had not done so. He could see the hand of his great rival the Parson in all things around him. Sometimes he almost fancied he could see his face, mournful, sad, looking in at the window out of the storm at the happy pair by his hearth-stone.

Early one Autumn some prospectors pushed far up the Fork running parallel with the trail leading out of camp; and there, in the leaves, they found a skull. There was a hole in the temple, and the marks of sharp teeth on the smooth white surface. They also found a small silver-mounted pistol.

The party came down to the Forks one night, where friends were enjoying themselves at the saloon. The leader told what they had found, and laid the pistol on the counter.

It was one of the Parson's little "bull-pups."

The pistol was empty.

One final word of the once genteel Deboon, and we prepare to descend from the Sierras. Buffeted, beaten down, and blown about, still he lingered near his old haunts in the Forks.

At last, the broken man, who was now only known as Old Baboon, because he was so ugly, and twisted, and bent, and crooked, when he had no home, no mine, no mind, nothing at all, and did not want any thing at all but a grave, stumbled on to a mine that made him almost a prince in fortune. He would not leave the Sierras now. He settled there. Here is an extract from a letter in which he invites a distinguished traveling Yankee philanthropist and missionary to come to him and make his house his home. After describing the house and lands, he says:

"The house stands in this wood of pine. We have two California grizzlies, and a pair of bull-dogs. Sandy keeps the dogs chained, but I let the grizzlies go free. We are not troubled with visitors."

The little poet had no place in the heart of the camp at the first. And now at the last when he was about to go away, he held even a less place than when he came.

Nobody knew when he came, nobody cared. Now that he was passing away at last, nobody, save the Widow, knew of it. Nobody cared to know of it. Truly, this singular creature did not "fit in" anywhere in the Sierras.

The Widow had been seen to enter the little hermitage alone, and very regularly of late, but no one made inquiry or interfered now. The case was peculiar. The guilt of the Widow was an accepted fact. No one under the circumstances could speak to her of him. They left this all to her, a sort of monopoly of death.

We leave her at this bedside and turn for the last time to the little Chinaman.

And what became of the little brown man with the meek almond eyes and the peaceful smile that for ever hovered about the corner of his mouth?

Poor little Washee-Washee! When the Widow got married he had to go. He could not embark in business again, and he would not go away. The Widow always gave him all he asked when he came to her, but that was very little. She even tried to persuade him to accept little gifts, and to take some delicacies for his stomach's sake, but the little pagan would only shake his head, smile the least bit out of one corner of his mouth, and then go away as if half offended.

Every five years there is a curious sort of mule caravan seen meandering up and down the mining streams of California, where Chinamen are to be found. It is a quiet train, and quite unlike those to be found there driven by Mexicans, and bearing whisky and dry goods. In this train or caravan the drivers do not shout or scream. The mules, it always seemed to me, do not even bray. This caravan travels almost always by night, and it is driven and managed almost altogether by Chinamen. These Chinamen are civil, very respectful, very quiet, very mournful both in their dress and manner.

These mules, both in coming in and in going out of a camp, are loaded with little beech-wood boxes of about three feet in length and one foot square.

When the train arrives in a camp these boxes are taken from off the backs of the mules, stored in some Chinaman's cabin close to the trail, and there they lie, so far as the world knows, undisturbed for two or three days. Then some midnight, the mules are quietly drawn up to the cabin-door, the boxes are brought out, and the mules are loaded, and the line winds away up the hill and out on the mountain to where their freight can be taken down to the sea on wheels.

The only apparent difference in these boxes now is the lead label at either end, which was not there when they entered the camp.

This is the caravan of the dead. No Chinaman will consent to let his bones lie in the land of the barbarian. The bones of every Chinaman, even to the beggar—if there ever was such a thing as a Chinese beggar in California—are taken back to the land of his fathers.

Washee-Washee stood watching the train climb the corkscrew trail in the gray dawn one morning, and then shaking his head he went to the Widow and said—

"By'ee, by'ee. Washee-Washee allee samee."

And it was so. His first great commercial enterprise had been a disastrous failure, and the brown little fellow never recovered. Other Chinamen poured into camp, and he certainly had friends among them all, but he went to none in his griefs as he did to the Widow; she who had been his friend in his first great trouble.

The little brown man took to opium, and gradually grew almost black. His little bright black eyes grew brighter, his thin face grew thinner, and he became a little more than a shadow. Still he would smile a bit out of that corner of his mouth. Would smile as if he was smiling at Death, and was trying to cheat him into the idea that he felt perfectly well.

The caravan came in due time; as before, it rested, loaded, climbed the hill, and as the train led up against the morning star, you might have read on one little box, wherein a skeleton lay doubled up like a jack knife, this name:

"Washee-Washee."

People began to remember that they had not seen their silent and singular little poet since the death and burial of the Gopher.

Surely he was ill. At all events, the Widow went boldly and regularly now to his cabin. And to the credit of the camp, be it said, it at last began to look with toleration on these missions to the humble vine-clad hermitage of the sad and lonesome little poet.

Only once more he came out and sat by the door, pale and dreamy and full of mystery.

The schoolmaster, not an unkindly man, stopped a moment with his book and slate under his arm, as he led a little girl by the hand, and looking into the palid face before him, said:

"It is a hard old world, Billie. A hard old world. At best we have to belabor the old earth; beat her to make her give us bread."

"Beat her!" The little thin hands clasped and lifted as if in prayer. "Belabor my dear mother Earth? Why, she gave us birth, she gives us all our bread, she gives us all that is beautiful and good. She will take us again to her bosom. I will pray to Earth, that I may have rest on her tranquil breast."

The schoolmaster passed on, and the sad little dreamer arose with difficulty, and passed for the last time from the light of the sun.

When the schoolmaster walked by next morning the door stood open. The little girl looked in, and then ran away as if afraid. Did she see with her child vision the face of death? The Schoolmaster, perhaps fearing to compromise his character by any association with this singular being, hurried on after the little girl, and did not turn around or look back till he had set foot over the sill of the little log school-house on the hill. His heart was beating very wildly. He had said nothing, he had heard nothing, he had seen nothing. But somehow the man's heart was beating with a strange terror, and he wanted to turn back and enter the cabin, and speak once more to the lonely little sufferer.

The man called his school to order, however, took off his coat, hung it up behind the door, ran his two hands through his hair, time and again, but failing to pacify himself by this means, called out a little boy, and flogged him soundly.

He afterwards remembered that there was a black cat sitting in the door as he passed, quietly washing her face, yet at the same time looking intently at him out of her green eyes.

The heroes of the world are women. The women, as a rule, have done the great deeds of valor. Men, however, have written the histories and appropriated a great deal indeed to themselves.

I know very well that in a certain kind of noisy heroism man makes a great mark, and instances of valor, even in a quiet way, where man fights his battle alone and in the dark, without the observation or applause of the world, are not wanting. But the great battles, in darkness and disgrace, where death and ignominy waited, the small-great battles, the heart the battle-field, where no friend would come, where no pen should chronicle, these silent fights have been fought and won by women.

Understanding all this I can understand why the Widow chose to bear all the reproof, and let her friend, the refugee, the dreamer, the "Poet," live and die unknown and in peace.

The next morning as the Schoolmaster came by, with the little girl sliding up close to his legs, on the opposite side from the cabin, the Widow with a face of unutterable sadness was outside trying to tie a piece of something black to the door-latch.

The man lifted his hat, and came reverently and slowly forward.

There was no need of saying anything now. He understood it all, and after assisting her in silence to do the office of respect for the dead within, he took the little girl's hand again in his, turned to go, took a few steps forward, and then stopping and turning around, again lifted his hat and said softly to the Widow:

"I will stop at the saloon and send up some of the boys to take charge of the body and prepare it for the grave."

"No," sighed the Widow in a voice that was scarcely heard above the beating of her heart, "No, George," and she came slowly and calmly up to the man and stood there with her white face lifted close into his. "No George, you will go back to the house, and get your mother and your sister to come and help me now at the last. For it is a woman that lies dead there in that little vine-covered cabin."

The woman had kept the woman's secret. She had given her life as it were for the life of another. But now that all was over; the whole story was to be written in the single name on the little granite gravestone. It was the name ofNancy Williams.

CATON.—A Summer in Norway, with Notes on the Industries, Habits, etc., of the People, the History of the Country, the Climate and Productions, and of the Red Deer, Reindeer, and Elk, by Hon.J. D. Caton, LL.D.

"The tone of the book is frank, almost colloquial, always communicative and leaves a favorable impression both of the intelligence and good nature with which the author pursued his way through unknown wilds. * * They are excellent specimens of terse and graphic composition, presenting a distinct image to the mind, without any superfluous details."—New York Tribune.'The book of travels, which Judge Caton has presented to the public, is of a high order of merit, and sets forth the interesting natural phenomena and popular characteristics of the land of the 'unsetting sun' with great strength and clearness."—Boston Post."He is, as far as we know, the first foreign traveler who has given anything like a correct statement of the nature of the union between Norway and Sweden."—The Nation.

'The book of travels, which Judge Caton has presented to the public, is of a high order of merit, and sets forth the interesting natural phenomena and popular characteristics of the land of the 'unsetting sun' with great strength and clearness."—Boston Post.

"He is, as far as we know, the first foreign traveler who has given anything like a correct statement of the nature of the union between Norway and Sweden."—The Nation.

CHARD.—Across the Sea, and Other Poems. ByThos. S. Chard.

"This little gem of a book is one of the best instances ofmultum in parvothat has been furnished the reading public in a long time. * * The poetry is of a kind not often seen now-a-days; it is of the soul, and reads as though given by inspiration. * * There is a mysticism in the little book, which reminds us of the 'Lotus Eaters' or 'Festus.'"—The Alliance.

CLEVELAND.—Landscape Architecture, as applied to the wants of the West; with an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains. ByH. W. S. Cleveland, Landscape Architect.

"My object in these few pages is simply to show that, by whatever name it may be called, the subdivision and arrangement of land for the occupation of civilized men, is an art demanding the exercise of ingenuity, judgment and taste, and one which nearly concerns the interest of real estate proprietors, and the welfare and happiness of all future occupants."—Extract from Preface.

CRAWFORD.—A Few Thoughts for a Few Friends. By MissAlice Arnold Crawford.

"There is about these poems an air of trusting faith, of gentle tenderness, as if of one who, soaring upon the confines of a better life, had longed to leave some sweet remembrance here. They stand forth from the way-side of poetic literature like some peaceful chapel robed in ivy, where the dead are strewn with flowers, and the living steal in the shadows of the evening to seek a rest from weariness and pain."—Inter-Ocean.

FOYE.—Tables for the Determination and Classification of Minerals Found in the United States. ByJames C. Foye, A.M., Professor of Chemistry and Physics, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin.

"Following Dana, our chief American authority, and gathering aid from various distinguished European writers, this brief manual aims to furnish the student with such help as is needed in order to determine and classify the minerals of the United States. Some useful hints as to apparatus, and suitable notes upon other matters, precede the tables."—Journal of Education.

GILES.—Out from the Shadows. A Novel; by MissElla A. Giles.

"Miss Giles' first work has had a very large sale, and has attracted the attention of readers and critics throughout the country. Her second book gives evidence of the ripening powers of the authoress, and shows the improvement which she has made as a writer, and a mastery of style and effect which are really uncommon."—Milwaukee News."The characters are all well conceived, and the story is pleasantly written."Inter-Ocean.

"The characters are all well conceived, and the story is pleasantly written."Inter-Ocean.

GILES.—Bachelor Ben. A Novel; by MissElla A. Giles.

"A story of great descriptive and analytic mastery. * * A master-piece of free and natural handling of human life, and marks a new departure in fiction, in that the hero never marries, and the author has attempted to group the sympathies of readers about an unconventional man."—Home Journal(New York)."The book is refreshingly guiltless of all superfluous characters. The tone is good throughout. The moral apparent."—Chicago Times.

"The book is refreshingly guiltless of all superfluous characters. The tone is good throughout. The moral apparent."—Chicago Times.

HALL.—Poems of the Farm and Fireside. ByEugene J. Hall.

"In vigor and pathos they are certainly equal—we should say superior—to Carleton's Farm Ballads; in humor scarcely inferior to the Biglow Papers."—Interior."There is a nobility of mind even among the toilers of the land too often overlooked, and for this reason we like the flavor of these poems, because they smell of the field and forest, as well as portray the inner life of society at the fireside."—Pittsburgh Commercial.

"In vigor and pathos they are certainly equal—we should say superior—to Carleton's Farm Ballads; in humor scarcely inferior to the Biglow Papers."—Interior.

"There is a nobility of mind even among the toilers of the land too often overlooked, and for this reason we like the flavor of these poems, because they smell of the field and forest, as well as portray the inner life of society at the fireside."—Pittsburgh Commercial.

HEWITT.—"Our Bible." Three Lectures, delivered at Unity Church, Oak Park, Ill., by Rev.J. O. M. Hewitt.

"This volume is rich in erudition and conspicuously clear in the enunciation of the objections to the orthodox idea of an inspiration which makes it infallible in all particulars."—Chicago Journal.

LAMARTINE.—Graziella; a Story of Italian Love. Translated from the French ofA. De LamartinebyJames B. Runnion.

"'Graziella' is a poem in prose. The subject and the treatment are both eminently poetic. * * * It glows with love of the beautiful in all nature. * * * It is pure literature, a perfect story, couched in perfect words. The sentences have the rhythm and flow, the sweetness and tender fancy of the original. It is uniform with 'Memories,' the fifth edition of which has just been published, and it should stand side by side with that on the shelves of every lover of pure, strong thoughts put in pure, strong words. 'Graziella' is a book to be loved."—Tribune.

MASON.—Mae Madden. A Story; by Mrs.Mary Murdoch Mason, with an introductory poem byJoaquin Miller.

"There is hardly a page in which you may not find some bright, fresh thought; some little generalization full of the flavor of true wit, or some charming description, deliciously feminine, and running over with the spirit of poetry."—Cincinnati Times."We have read this little book with great pleasure. * * * It frequently reminds us of Mr. Howell's delicately constructed stories, and in it, as in a mirror, we see reflected that true refinement and culture of the author's mind."—New Haven Palladium.

"We have read this little book with great pleasure. * * * It frequently reminds us of Mr. Howell's delicately constructed stories, and in it, as in a mirror, we see reflected that true refinement and culture of the author's mind."—New Haven Palladium.

MASON AND LALOR.—The Primer of Political Economy, in Sixteen Definitions and Forty Propositions, byA. B. MasonandJ. J. Lalor.

"We know of no other work anywhere of sixty pages that begins to give the amount of information on the subject that has been put with such remarkable clearness into these sixty pages."—Hartford Courant."For a short and comprehensive treatise, we know of nothing better than 'The Primer of Political Economy.' The information is conveyed in a very concise and happy manner. The style is perfectly transparent, and the illustrations admirably chosen. We venture to believe that not a quarter of the men in the Lower House of Congress know as much about Political Economy as can be learned from this compact and interesting little treatise."—Christian Register.

"For a short and comprehensive treatise, we know of nothing better than 'The Primer of Political Economy.' The information is conveyed in a very concise and happy manner. The style is perfectly transparent, and the illustrations admirably chosen. We venture to believe that not a quarter of the men in the Lower House of Congress know as much about Political Economy as can be learned from this compact and interesting little treatise."—Christian Register.

MILLER.—First Fam'lies of the Sierras. A Novel; byJoaquin Miller.

A most graphic and realistic sketch of life in a mining cañon in the very earliest days of California. The rough heroes and heroines are evidently drawn from life, and the dramatic scenes are full of thrilling interest. Bret. Harte has never worked this rich vein of American life to better advantage.

MÜLLER.—Memories; A Story of German Love. Translated from the German ofMax Müller, byGeo. P. Upton.

"'Memories' is one of the prettiest and worthiest books of the year. The story is full of that indescribable half-naturalness, that effortless vraisemblance, which is so commonly a charm of German writers, and so seldom paralleled in English. * * * Scarcely could there be drawn a more lovely figure than that of the invalid Princess, though it is so nearly pure spirit that earthly touch seems almost to profane her."—Springfield (Mass.) Republican.

McLANDBURGH.—The Automaton-Ear and Other Sketches. ByMiss Florence McLandburgh.

Any one of the many who have read "The Man at Crib," "The Automaton-Ear," or "The Anthem of Judea," which have been so widely copied in various periodicals, will look with the highest anticipations to this author, who is no less gifted than she is original and eccentric.

SWING.—Truths for To-Day.First Series.ByProfessor David Swing.

"The preacher makes no display of his rich resources, but you are convinced that you are listening to a man of earnest thought, of rare culture, and of genuine humanity. His forte is evidently not that of doctrinal discussion. He deals in no nice distinctions of creed. He has no taste for hair-splitting subtleties, but presents a broad and generous view of human duty, appealing to the highest instincts and the purest motives of a lofty manhood."—New York Tribune.

SWING.—Truths for To-Day.Second Series.ByProfessor David Swing.

This volume will contain the latest discourses ofProf. Swing, some of them preached at the Fourth Church, but most of them spoken at the Theatre to the New Central Church. It is universally conceded that these are the finest efforts he has ever made, and the general demand for their preservation in more permanent form than the newspaper reports, has led to their issue in this volume. They are selected, revised and arranged for publication byProf. Swinghimself.

SWING.—Trial of Prof. Swing. TheOfficial Reportof this important trial.

"It constitutes a complete record of one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical trials of modern times."—Boston Journal."This volume will be a precious bit of history twenty-five years hence, and its pages will be read with mingled interest and surprise."—Golden Age.

"It constitutes a complete record of one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical trials of modern times."—Boston Journal.

"This volume will be a precious bit of history twenty-five years hence, and its pages will be read with mingled interest and surprise."—Golden Age.

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