Posey was there, and, while Win bustled about in the lean-to kitchen making hot biscuits and coffee, he began to tell us entrancing yarns of the adventures and successes they had enjoyed hunting and trapping together during the previous winter. Apparently neither had felt it any hardship that for months they had been shut off entirely from all companionship with their kind. Nature is good to these lone men of the mountains. She gives them happiness and serenity in her arms, steeps them in lore of all manner of wild things, and makes them simple and honest of heart as a child. But for what she gives she exacts an awful price, for she cuts from their hearts the dearest ties of the race. In all those little cabins scattered along the slopes and through the gorges of the Sierras there is scarcely one in which you will find wife or child, or regret that there is none, or wish that such might yet be. The talk drifted from one thing to another, and finally one of our party told Mark Twain's yarn about "the meanest man on earth." Our host listened at the kitchen door, a streak of flour shining white athwart the cataract of his auburn beard, and testified his amusement by a delighted roar that was like unto the rejoicings of a bull of Bashan. "Posey," he exclaimed, "tell 'em about that stingy friend o' yours!" Posey chuckled and pushed his old slouch hat to the back of his head. "Well," he said, "I reckon that feller was jest about as stingy as the feller you 've been tellin' about, and mebby stingier, 'cause he 'd take more risks. Anyway, he was as ornery stingy as he could be an' live. If he 'd been any wuss he 'd of died to save grub an' shoe leather. W'y, him and me was out huntin' together oncet, over toward Mono. But I oughter tell you fust it was a long time ago, 'way back in the days when everybody had to carry powder-flasks, an' each of us had one on a string 'round his neck. "Well, 'long about noon we come to a clear, purty little lake and set down to eat a snack. I was stoopin' over the edge of the lake to get some water in my hat an' my powder-flask slipped off an' went, kersplash, down to the bottom! The water was so clear I could see it layin' down there, as plain as could be, fifty feet down, I reckon, fer them mountain lakes is prodeejus deep. Well, the other feller, he could dive better 'n I could--he was a great one fer divin'--an' he said he 'd go down after it. So he stripped, but kep' his powder-flask 'round his neck. That kinder riled me, fer it looked as if he was afeared I 'd run off with it while he was gone. I did n't say nothin', though, an' down he went.