IN our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum.
The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick;

and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount
Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back

to Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that time we had
begun to realize the difficulties of our position. We had

found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our
red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to

get a China-boy to go along with us when we returned. We
could have given him a whole house to himself, self-

contained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the
money question we were prepared to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the

Calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from
day to day it languished on, with protestations on our part

and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee.
At length, about half-past eight of our last evening, with

the waggon ready harnessed to convey us up the grade, the
washerman, with a somewhat sneering air, produced the boy.

He was a handsome, gentlemanly lad, attired in rich dark
blue, and shod with snowy white; but, alas! he had heard

rumours of Silverado. He know it for a lone place on the
mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house near by, where he

might smoke a pipe of opium o' nights with other China-boys,
and lose his little earnings at the game of tan; and he first

backed out for more money; and then, when that demand was
satisfied, refused to come point-blank. He was wedded to his

wash-houses; he had no taste for the rural life; and we must
go to our mountain servantless. It must have been near half

an hour before we reached that conclusion, standing in the
midst of Calistoga high street under the stars, and the

China-boy and Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English in
the sweetest voices and with the most musical inflections.

We were not, however, to return alone; for we brought with us
Joe Strong, the painter, a most good-natured comrade and a

capital hand at an omelette. I do not know in which capacity
he was most valued - as a cook or a companion; and he did

excellently well in both.
The Kong Sam Kee negotiation had delayed us unduly; it must

have been half-past nine before we left Calistoga, and night
came fully ere we struck the bottom of the grade. I have

never seen such a night. It seemed to throw calumny in the
teeth of all the painters that ever dabbled in starlight.

The sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing
colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back. The stars, by

innumerable millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. The
milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven

seemed milky way. The greater luminaries shone each more
clearly than a winter's moon. Their light was dyed in every

sort of colour - red, like fire; blue, like steel; green,
like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply did each stand

forth in its own lustre that there was no appearance of that
flat, star-spangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all

the hollow of heaven was one chaos of contesting luminaries -
a hurry-burly of stars. Against this the hills and rugged

treetops stood out redly dark.
As we continued to advance, the lesser lights and milky ways

first grew pale, and then vanished; the countless hosts of
heaven dwindled in number by successive millions; those that

still shone had tempered their exceedingbrightness and
fallen back into their customarywistful distance; and the

sky declined from its first bewildering splendour into the
appearance of a common night. Slowly this change proceeded,

and still there was no sign of any cause. Then a whiteness
like mist was thrown over the spurs of the mountain. Yet a

while, and, as we turned a corner, a great leap of silver
light and net of forest shadows fell across the road and upon

our wondering waggonful; and, swimming low among the trees,
we beheld a strange, misshapen, waning moon, half-tilted on

her back.
"Where are ye when the moon appears?" so the old poet sang,

half-taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly purpose.
"As the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight tower of

shadow pours,
Streaming past the dim, wide portals,

Viewless to the eyes of mortals,
Till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's golden

shores."
So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. And so

had the sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and her
lit face put out, one after another, that galaxy of stars.

The wonder of the drive was over; but, by some nice
conjunction of clearness in the air and fit shadow in the

valley where we travelled, we had seen for a little while
that brave display of the midnight heavens. It was gone, but

it had been; nor shall I ever again behold the stars with the
same mind. He who has seen the sea commoved with a great

hurricane, thinks of it very differently from him who has
seen it only in a calm. And the difference between a calm

and a hurricane is not greatly more striking than that
between the ordinary face of night and the splendour that

shone upon us in that drive. Two in our waggon knew night as
she shines upon the tropics, but even that bore no

comparison. The nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the
star-fire, and the incredibleprojection of the stars

themselves, starting from their orbits, so that the eye
seemed to distinguish their positions in the hollow of space

- these were things that we had never seen before and shall
never see again.

Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way
among the scents and silence of the forest, reached the top

of the grade, wound up by Hanson's, and came at last to a
stand under the flying gargoyle of the chute. Sam, who had

been lying back, fast asleep, with the moon on his face, got
down, with the remark that it was pleasant "to be home." The

waggon turned and drove away, the noise gently dying in the
woods, and we clambered up the rough path, Caliban's great

feat of engineering, and came home to Silverado.
The moon shone in at the eastern doors and windows, and over

the lumber on the platform. The one tall pine beside. the
ledge was steeped in silver. Away up the canyon, a wild cat

welcomed us with three discordant squalls. But once we had
lit a candle, and began to review our improvements, homely in

either sense, and count our stores, it was wonderful what a
feeling of possession and permanence grow up in the hearts of

the lords of Silverado. A bed had still to be made up for
Strong, and the morning's water to be fetched, with clinking

pail; and as we set about these household duties, and showed
off our wealth and conveniences before the stranger, and had

a glass of wine, I think, in honour of our return, and
trooped at length one after another up the flying bridge of

plank, and lay down to sleep in our shattered, moon-pierced
barrack, we were among the happiest sovereigns in the world,

and certainly ruled over the most contented people. Yet, in
our absence, the palace had been sacked. Wild cats, so the

Hansons said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon,
a hatchet, and two knives.

EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE
NO one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the