To the amazement of all the Forks, one day, when a bearded man in gum boots, slouch hat, and blue shirt, reached in at the Widow's for his washing, the hand that reached it out was not the Widow's. It was the little brown lazy hand of Washee-Washee. Of course the camp did not like this. This Chinaman to them was a sort of eclipse, a dark body passing between the miners and their sun. They remonstrated, and the Parson bore the remonstrance to the Widow in a speech of his own; and, to his own great surprise it was not ornamented with a single oath. "The Forks began his reformation; let me go on with it. Why not?" answered the woman. "You will be plundered." "Of what?" The Parson looked at the gold nuggets on the mantel-piece, and shifted the quid of tobacco from right to left. "Washee-Washee will lie," began the Widow soberly. "He can lie, and he does lie, very cheerfully and very rapidly, in spite of his name, which might suggest better things; but he steals no more--do you, little brownie?" Washee-Washee's little black eyes glistened with gratitude. The little pagan was coming up in the social scale. The Widow had begun her missionary business where all the world ought to begin it--at home. The Parson went away. He felt that somehow his footing with the Widow was shaken, and that he must do something to redeem the day. The Parson was always trying to do something original. He concluded to "lay for" the Chinaman. He took a fresh quid of tobacco, stowed himself away in the bush, and waited. In the twilight, the mournful, the sad, but beautiful ghost of the great golden days of the Sierras, a hand reached out and took Washee-Washee by the queue as a man would take a tethered horse by the lariat. The little man did not smile as before. He even struck back with his little brown bony hands. He wound one of them in the Parson's beard, and shouted aloud to the empty woods. The valor of honesty was on him. However, kick as he might and shout as he could, it all did but little good, and the Parson proceeded very coolly to take him by the two heels, hold him up in the trail, and shake him in a smooth level part of it, just as if he was about to empty a bag, and did not wish to waste the contents. Now the Parson was not at all vicious on this occasion; he had no wish to harm the Chinaman: he only wished to help the Widow. He shook Washee-Washee in perfect confidence that he would find all the gold nuggets, half the spoons, and nearly all the household goods in the little Widow's warm and sparely furnished room. He had not been a bit surprised if he had shaken out the Widow's goods and wares, her wash-tub, and clothes-line. "Ah, certainly," said the Parson, pausing, to himself, "for is not Washee-Washee's line the clothes-line?"