It was a nondescript building, half canvas and half boards. The interior seen through the open door was fitted up with side shelves, a counter carelessly piled with provisions, groceries, clothing, and hardware--with no attempt at display or even ordinary selection--and a table, on which stood a demijohn and three or four dirty glasses. Two roughly dressed men, whose long, matted beards and hair left only their eyes and lips visible in the tangled hirsute wilderness below their slouched hats, were leaning against the opposite sides of the doorway, smoking. Almost thrown against them in the rapid momentum of his descent, Clarence halted violently. “Well, sonny, you needn't capsize the shanty,” said the first man, without taking his pipe from his lips. “If yer looking fur yer ma, she and yer Aunt Jane hev jest gone over to Parson Doolittle's to take tea,” observed the second man lazily. “She allowed that you'd wait.” “I'm--I'm--going to--to the mines,” explained Clarence, with some hesitation. “I suppose this is the way.” The two men took their pipes from their lips, looked at each other, completely wiped every vestige of expression from their faces with the back of their hands, turned their eyes into the interior of the cabin, and said, “Will yer come yer, now WILL yer?” Thus adjured, half a dozen men, also bearded and carrying pipes in their mouths, straggled out of the shanty, and, filing in front of it, squatted down, with their backs against the boards, and gazed comfortably at the boy. Clarence began to feel uneasy. “I'll give,” said one, taking out his pipe and grimly eying Clarence, “a hundred dollars for him as he stands.” “And seein' as he's got that bran-new rig-out o' tools,” said another, “I'll give a hundred and fifty--and the drinks. I've been,” he added apologetically, “wantin' sunthin' like this a long time.” “Well, gen'lemen,” said the man who had first spoken to him, “lookin' at him by and large; takin' in, so to speak, the gin'ral gait of him in single harness; bearin' in mind the perfect freshness of him, and the coolness and size of his cheek--the easy downyness, previousness, and utter don't-care-a-damnativeness of his coming yer, I think two hundred ain't too much for him, and we'll call it a bargain.” Clarence's previous experience of this grim, smileless Californian chaff was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the cabin, and repeated doggedly, “I asked you if this was the way to the mines.” “It ARE the mines, and these yere are the miners,” said the first speaker gravely. “Permit me to interdoose 'em. This yere's Shasta Jim, this yere's Shotcard Billy, this is Nasty Bob, and this Slumgullion Dick. This yere's the Dook o' Chatham Street, the Livin' Skeleton, and me!” “May we ask, fair young sir,” said the Living Skeleton, who, however, seemed in fairly robust condition, “whence came ye on the wings of the morning, and whose Marble Halls ye hev left desolate?”