After the heat and turmoil of a day when the children have been especially vexing, what mother does not smile in forgiveness upon the peaceful faces of her offspring, whose characters in sleep appear as spotless as the sheets which cover them? So smiled the sun upon the grown-up children of the Sierras asleep under the winter snow. After the heat and turmoil of the summer, the mad search for gold was over. Save when there was a heavy snowstorm, the Graniteville stage traveled over the mountains, as usual; but no highwayman molested it. It would have been a practical impossibility for a robber to have made off with booty. The snow was light and feathery, and the drifts were often twenty-five feet deep. The web-footed snow-shoes of New England could not be used with advantage in such snow, so recourse was had to skis. But it was difficult to manage these upon the steep trails of the canons, so that people generally were content to hibernate like grizzlies. Many a miner, glad to indulge his liking of conviviality, would take up his residence in some mountain village for the winter, spending with a liberal hand the precious yellow dust that he had worked so hard to get. Many, forced to keep the wolf from the door, found work with lumbermen and ditch companies. In my opinion, Mat Bailey and Dr. Mason had a decided advantage over both miners and villagers. Like the man-o-war's man of song they enjoyed steady occupations summer and winter, and spent much of their time in the open. The cold was never extreme, the thermometer very rarely dropping below zero Fahrenheit. The dust of summer was buried deep under the gleaming snow, and the air was crisp and exhilarating. Often the doctor was one of Mat's passengers. Often he would leave the stage where some trail wound down into a canon, and putting on his skis glide away among the great pines, which, covered with snow and ornamented with shining icicles, were scattered over the mountain slopes like great wigwams of white canvas. A doctor anywhere is a welcome visitor and a friend in need; in the wilderness, in the depth of winter he ranks but little lower than the angels. Often, coming to a lonely cabin, fairly buried in snow-drifts, he would climb in through the gable window of the loft; and no doubt his descent to the patient lying below suggested the arrival of a heavenly visitor.