“So you see, Frank, that although I don't believe in ghosts, I have yet met with a circumstance which I cannot account for.” “It is very curious anyhow, uncle, and beats ghost stories into fits.” “I like it better, certainly,” one of the girls said, “for we can go to bed without being afraid of dreaming about it.” “Well, you must not talk any more now. Off to bed, off to bed,” Colonel Harley said, “or I shall get into terrible disgrace with your fathers and mothers, who have been looking very gravely at me for the last three quarters of an hour.” WHITE FACED DICK: A STORY OF PINE TREE GULCH How Pine Tree Gulch got its name no one knew, for in the early days every ravine and hillside was thickly covered with pines. It may be that a tree of exceptional size caught the eye of the first explorer, that he camped under it, and named the place in its honor; or, maybe, some fallen giant lay in the bottom and hindered the work of the first prospectors. At any rate, Pine Tree Gulch it was, and the name was as good as any other. The pine trees were gone now. Cut up for firing, or for the erection of huts, or the construction of sluices, but the hillside was ragged with their stumps. The principal camp was at the mouth of the Gulch, where the little stream, which scarce afforded water sufficient for the cradles in the dry season, but which was a rushing torrent in winter, joined the Yuba. The best ground was at the junction of the streams, and lay, indeed, in the Yuba Valley rather than in the Gulch. At first most gold had been found higher up, but there was here comparatively little depth down to the bedrock, and as the ground became exhausted the miners moved down towards the mouth of the Gulch. They were doing well, as a whole, how well no one knew, for miners are chary of giving information as to what they are making; still, it was certain they were doing well, for the bars were doing a roaring trade, and the storekeepers never refused credit--a proof in itself that the prospects were good. The flat at the mouth of the Gulch was a busy scene, every foot was good paying stuff, for in the eddy, where the torrents in winter rushed down into the Yuba, the gold had settled down and lay thick among the gravel. But most of the parties were sinking, and it was a long way down to the bedrock; for the hills on both sides sloped steeply, and the Yuba must here at one time have rushed through a narrow gorge, until, in some wild freak, it brought down millions of tons of gravel, and resumed its course seventy feet above its former level.