“Old Grizzly” McFarlane went away. So did Bloody Bill. So the Bar’s population dwindled. Fewer travellers, dot-like, were seen climbing the steep trail o’er Red Mountain. Miller, the Chinese Camp news-agent, who, with mailbags well filled with the New York papers, had for years cantered from Red Mountain to Morgan’s Bar, emptying his sack as he went at the rate of fifty and twenty-five cents per sheet, paid the Bar his last visit and closed out the newspaper business there forever. Then the County Supervisors abolished it as an election precinct, and its name no longer figured in the returns. No more after the vote was polled and the result known did the active and ambitious partisan mount his horse and gallop over the mountain to Sonora, the county seat, twenty miles away, to deliver the official count, signed, sealed and attested by the local Red Mountain Election Inspectors. Finally the Bar dwindled to Thompson, Keen Fann and his Mongolian band. Then Thompson left. Keen Fann grieved at losing his friend and protector. He came on the eve of departure to the dismantled store. Tears were in his eyes. He presented Thompson with a basket of tea and a silver half-dollar, and bade him farewell in incoherent and intranslatable words of lamenting polyglot English. CHAPTER XVIII. MY CALIFORNIA SCHOOL. I was not confident of my ability to teach even a “common school” when the situation was offered me in a little Tuolumne County mining camp. I said so to my old friend, Pete H., who had secured me the position. “Well,” said he, after a reflective pause, “do you retain a clear recollection of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet? For if you do, you are equal to any educational demand this camp will make on you.” It was a reckless “camp.” No phase of life was viewed or treated seriously. They did walk their horses to the grave slowly at a funeral, but how they did race back! It was legally necessary, however, that I should be examined as to my ability by the school trustees. These were Dr. D., Bill K., a saloon-keeper, and Tom J., a miner. I met them in the Justice’s office. The doctor was an important appearing man, rotund, pompous, well-dressed, and spectacled. He glared at me with an expression betwixt sadness and severity. I saw he was to be the chief inquisitor. I expected from him a searching examination, and trembled. It was years since I had seen a school-book. I knew that in geography I was rusty and in mathematics musty.