I suppose that it really was a very dangerous pastime, for although sometimes the drift tunnel led us to a sunlit opening on the hillside, more often we reached a blind end and were forced to return to the main shaft and to “shin” up the rope, with from ten to forty feet of inky water waiting to catch us if we fell. Or we went up the river to “swing the rocker” for old Ali Quong. He always pretended to drive us away, bellowing fiercely as soon as he caught sight of us, “Whassa malla you? Alle time you come see Ali Quong! Ketchem too-oo much tlouble for po-or old Chinaman”--the whole time with his wrinkled, brown face wreathed in smiles. There we stayed the long summer afternoon, swinging the rocker while Quong shoveled in the pebbly dirt, watching him take the black sand, which held the gold, off the canvas with his little spade-like scoop, and panning it for him in the heavy iron pan, fascinated to see what we should find. Usually only a few small nuggets in a group of colors (flake gold), but once we found a good sized nugget which Quong gallantly gave me for a “Chinese New Year” gift. At dusk he sent us home, each with a bar of brown barley sugar--smelling to the blue of opium--which he fished out of one of his numerous jumpers with his long-fingered, sensitive hands. They are dead, long ago--Ah Quong, old Sing, Shotgun-Chinaman--and gone to the blessed region of the Five Immortals, I know, but every true Californian will understand the regard the pioneer families had for these faithful Chinese servitors who took as much loving pride in the aristocratic and unblemished names of their “familees” as the white persons who bore them. Four generations of my family, old Sing lived to serve--but I must get on with my forty-niner's tale of the hanging of Charlie Price! “Eh, mon, but the spring is here again,” said Jim “Hutch” (Hutchinson) to Old Man Greeley. “Is it so, now?” returned the little man, gazing off through the sunny, velvet air to a world which had been painted clean, new green. His shrewd, blue eyes returned to the ponderous Scotchman. “And how came you to realize that it was spring?” he asked maliciously. “How came you to lick Sandy McArthur-r-r?” Hutchinson came back at him. “Tell me that.” “Well, but whisper, man,” said old Jimmie plaintively, “what else could a man be after doin'? Me boots were on, an' I could not run away an' climb a tree, so I used them on McArthur.” “Ye're a wild fightin' Irishman with no regard for the Sabbath,” returned Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour old Scotchman might tell upon him. It would not pay to lose his Celtic temper. “It was to church I was goin'.” he growled. “'Twas why I was wearin' me red-topped high boots.” “Where was church that day, whatever? At the Widow Schmitt's?” Jimmie squirmed. “You mentioned the beautiful spring, I mind,” he countered deftly. Suddenly Jim Hutch grinned.