“Extraordinary echo!” said the Judge. “Extraordinary d—d skunk!” roared the driver contemptuously. “Come out of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don’t hide in the dark; I wouldn’t if I were you, Miggles,” continued Yuba Bill, now dancing about in an excess of fury. “Miggles!” continued the voice, “O Miggles!” “My good man! Mr. Myghail!” said the Judge, softening the asperities of the name as much as possible. “Consider the inhospitality of refusing shelter from the inclemency of the weather to helpless females. Really, my dear sir”—But a succession of “Miggles,” ending in a burst of laughter, drowned his voice. Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the inclosure. We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that we could distinguish was that we were in a garden—from the rose bushes that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves—and before a long, rambling wooden building. “Do you know this Miggles?” asked the Judge of Yuba Bill. “No, nor don’t want to,” said Bill shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles. “But, my dear sir,” expostulated the Judge, as he thought of the barred gate. “Lookee here,” said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, “hadn’t you better go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I’m going in,” and he pushed open the door of the building. A long room, lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; someone sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we crowded together into the room after the driver and expressman. “Hello! be you Miggles?” said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant. The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward it and turned the eye of his coach-lantern upon its face. It was a man’s face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had sometimes seen in an owl’s. The large eyes wandered from Bill’s face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous object without further recognition. Bill restrained himself with an effort. “Miggles! be you deaf? You ain’t dumb anyhow, you know,” and Yuba Bill shook the insensate figure by the shoulder. To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable stranger apparently collapsed, sinking into half his size and an indistinguishable heap of clothing. “Well, dern my skin,” said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and hopelessly retiring from the contest.