A few months later, however, they changed their opinions, for the constable, after the expiration of his term of office, and while under the influence of a glass too much, related the whole history of the night of Beigh’s first arrival at Bowerton. The Bowertonians were law-abiding people; but, somehow, Guzzy’s customers increased from that very day, and his prosperity did not decline even after “Guzzy & Beigh” was the sign over the door of the store which had been built and stocked with Mrs. Wyett’s money. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A ROMANCE OF HAPPY REST. HAPPY REST is a village whose name has never appeared in gazetteer or census report. This remark should not cause any depreciation of the faithfulness of public and private statisticians, for Happy Rest belonged to a class of settlements which sprang up about as suddenly as did Jonah’s Gourd, and, after a short existence, disappeared so quickly that the last inhabitant generally found himself alone before he knew that anything unusual was going on. When the soil of Happy Rest supported nothing more artificial than a broken wagon wheel, left behind by some emigrants going overland to California, a deserter from a fort near by discovered that the soil was auriferous. His statement to that effect, made in a barroom in the first town he reached thereafter, led to his being invited to drink, which operation resulted in certain supplementary statements and drinks. Within three hours every man within five miles of that barroom knew that the most paying dirt on the continent had been discovered not far away, and three hours later a large body of gold-hunters, guided by the deserter, were _en route_ for the auriferous locality; while a storekeeper and a liquor-dealer, with their respective stocks-in-trade, followed closely after. The ground was found; it proved to be tolerably rich; tents went up, underground residences were burrowed, and the grateful miners ordered the barkeeper to give unlimited credit to the locality’s discoverer. The barkeeper obeyed the order, and the ex-warrior speedily met his death in a short but glorious contest with John Barleycorn. There was no available lumber from which to construct a coffin, and the storekeeper had no large boxes; but as the liquor-seller had already emptied two barrels, these were taken, neatly joined in the centre, and made to contain the remains of the founder of the hamlet. The method of his death and origin of his coffin led a spirituous miner to suggest that he rested happily, and from this remark the name of the town was elaborated. Of course, no ladies accompanied the expedition. Men who went West for gold did not take their families with them, as a rule, and the settlers of new mining towns were all of the masculine gender.