Miggles, however, did not appear. Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure.... "Do you know this Miggles?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill. "No, nor don't want to," said Bill shortly. "But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge, as he thought of the barred gate. "Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in," and he pushed open the door of the building. That rings true. If one were obliged to ride at night over a wild, road-agent-infested trail there is no character in all fiction whom we would more gladly have for driver than Yuba Bill. We would like to see more of him than the brief glimpses allowed us by his creator. The humor in Harte is largely Western humor. There is the true California ring in such conversations, for instance, as those in the earlier pages of _Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy_. It is an atmosphere rather than a series of hits. One finds it in _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_: A few of the committee had urged hanging him [Oakhurst] as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice. This atmosphere of humor shimmers through all of the stories. There is never uproarious merriment, but there is constant humor. The conjugal troubles of the "old man" in _How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar_ are thus touched upon: His first wife, a delicate, pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his house to expose her infidelity. On arriving, the party found the shy, _petite_ creature quietly engaged in her household duties and retired abashed and discomfited. But the sensitive woman did not easily recover from her shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the closet in which he was concealed and escape with him. She left a boy of three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The old man's present wife had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.