must be entered from a different side and level. Not a
window-sash remained.

The door of the lower room was smashed, and one panel hung in
splinters. We entered that, and found a fair amount of

rubbish: sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by
the mountain winds; straw, sticks, and stones; a table, a

barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two home-made bootjacks,
signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers pinned

on the boarding, headed respectively "Funnel No. 1," and
"Funnel No. 2," but with the tails torn away. The window,

sashless of course, was choked with the green and sweetly
smelling foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the floor,

a spray of poison oak had shot up and was handsomely
prospering in the interior. It was my first care to cut away

that poison oak, Fanny standing by at a respectful distance.
That was our first improvement by which we took possession.

The room immediately above could only be entered by a plank
propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must

foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison
oak, the proper product of the country. Herein was, on

either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had once
lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless window

and a doorless doorwayopening on the air of heaven, five
feet above the ground. As for the third room, which entered

squarely from the ground level, but higher up the hill and
farther up the canyon, it contained only rubbish and the

uprights for another triple tier of beds.
The whole building was overhung by a bold, lion-like, red

rock. Poison oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and
chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all about it. In front,

in the strong sunshine, the platform lay overstrewn with busy
litter, as though the labours of the mine might begin again

to-morrow in the morning.
Following back into the canyon, among the mass of rotting

plant and through the flowering bushes, we came to a great
crazy staging, with a wry windless on the top; and clambering

up, we could look into an open shaft, leading edgeways down
into the bowels of the mountain, trickling with water, and

lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not. In that
quiet place the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was

loudly audible. Close by, another shaft led edgeways up into
the superincumbent shoulder of the hill. It lay partly open;

and sixty or a hundred feet above our head, we could see the
strata propped apart by solid wooden wedges, and a pine, half

undermined, precariously nodding on the verge. Here also a
rugged, horizontaltunnel ran straight into the unsunned

bowels of the rock. This secure angle in the mountain's
flank was, even on this wild day, as still as my lady's

chamber. But in the tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously
blew. Nor have I ever known that place otherwise than cold

and windy.
Such was our fist prospect of Juan Silverado. I own I had

looked for something different: a clique of neighbourly
houses on a village green, we shall say, all empty to be

sure, but swept and varnished; a trout stream brawling by;
great elms or chestnuts, humming with bees and nested in by

song-birds; and the mountains standing round about, as at
Jerusalem. Here, mountain and house and the old tools of

industry were all alike rusty and downfalling. The hill was
here wedged up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout

of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and nature
with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring

together at the ruin of that proud mountain. The view up the
canyon was a glimpse of devastation; dry red minerals sliding

together, here and there a crag, here and there dwarf thicket
clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken

outline trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed,
from our rock eyrie, we behold the greener side of nature;

and the bearing of the pines and the sweet smell of bays and
nutmegs commanded themselves gratefully to our senses. One

way and another, now the die was cast. Silverado be it!
After we had got back to the Toll House, the Jews were not

long of striking forward. But I observed that one of the
Hanson lads came down, before their departure, and returned

with a ship's kettle. Happy Hansons! Nor was it until after
Kelmar was gone, if I remember rightly, that Rufe put in an

appearance to arrange the details of our installation.
The latter part of the day, Fanny and I sat in the verandah

of the Toll House, utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind
among the trees on the other side of the valley. Sometimes,

we would have it it was like a sea, but it was not various
enough for that; and again, we thought it like the roar of a

cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; and then
we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be

compared with nothing but itself. My mind was entirely
preoccupied by the noise. I hearkened to it by the hour,

gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette go out. Sometimes
the wind would make a sally nearer hand, and send a shrill,

whistling crash among the foliage on our side of the glen;
and sometimes a back-draught would strike into the elbow

where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our
faces. But for the most part, this great, streaming gale

passed unweariedly by us into Napa Valley, not two hundred
yards away, visible by the tossing boughs, stunningly

audible, and yet not moving a hair upon our heads. So it
blew all night long while I was writing up my journal, and

after we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset heaven; and
so it was blowing still next morning when we rose.

It was a laughable thought to us, what had become of our
cheerful, wandering Hebrews. We could not suppose they had

reached a destination. The meanest boy could lead them miles
out of their way to see a gopher-hole. Boys, we felt to be

their special danger; none others were of that exact pitch of
cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their

minds: but before the attractions of a boy their most
settled resolutions would be war. We thought we could follow

in fancy these three aged Hebrew truants wandering in and out
on hilltop and in thicket, a demon boy trotting far ahead,

their will-o'-the-wisp conductor; and at last about midnight,
the wind still roaring in the darkness, we had a vision of

all three on their knees upon a mountain-top around a glow-
worm.

CHAPTER III. THE RETURN
NEXT morning we were up by half-past five, according to

agreement, and it was ten by the clock before our Jew boys
returned to pick us up. Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, and Abramina,

all smiling from ear to ear, and full of tales of the
hospitality they had found on the other side. It had not

gone unrewarded; for I observed with interest that the ship's
kettles, all but one, had been "placed." Three Lake County

families, at least, endowed for life with a ship's kettle.
Come, this was no misspent Sunday. The absence of the

kettles told its own story: our Jews said nothing about
them; but, on the other hand, they said many kind and comely

things about the people they had met. The two women, in
particular, had been charmed out of themselves by the sight

of a young girl surrounded by her admirers; all evening, it
appeared, they had been triumphing together in the girl's