All day the Indian pottered about in silence, fixing his traps and guns, and weaving a pair of moccasins for winter's use, while Job lay half asleep, half awake, living over again the glories of the week just closing. Toward evening the old Indian came in and sat by his guest and began to talk. Far into the night hours, while the camp-fire flashed and crackled without, he kept up his stories, till Job, intensely interested, forgot his pains and his dreams. In quaint English, shorn of all unnecessary words, Bill talked on. First he told bear stories, finishing each thrilling passage with a significant "Ugh!" The one that roused Job most and held him transfixed was of once when he suddenly met, coming out of the forest, a giant grizzly, which rose on his monster hind feet and advanced for the death embrace. "Me fire gun heap quick, kill him all dead, he fall, hit Bill, arm all torn, blood come, me sick. Ugh!" And turning back his blanket, he showed Job the scars from the grizzly's dying blow. Then he told tales of adventure. Of scaling the Half Dome by means of the iron pegs some daring climber had left there, and how finally, reaching the summit and lying flat, he peered over and saw himself mirrored in the lake below. He told of a wild ride down the icy slope of the Lyell Glacier; of a night, storm-bound, in the Hetchy-Hetchy, where he slept under the shelter of a limb drooping beneath the snow, with a group of frightened mountain birds for bedfellows. He told of beautiful parks far amid the solitude of the high Sierras, great mountain meadows where shy deer grazed, of crystal lakes that lay embowered in many a hidden mountain spot, of Mount Ritter's grandeur and the dizzy heights of Mount Whitney, till Job's head reeled, and he fell asleep that night dreaming of standing on the jagged, topmost summit of a lofty peak, with all the mountains going round and round below him, till he grew dizzy and fell and fell--and found himself wide awake, listening to the hoot of a distant owl and the breathing of his tawny host stretched out under the sky by the dying embers of the camp-fire. During the next two days Job was much alone. Bill came and went on many a secret, stealthy errand to where he knew the largest, most toothsome mountain trout had their home. Busy with his own thoughts, Job lay and dreamed the long hours away. "Make Bill feel bad. Want hear it? Ugh! Me tell it; me there. No brave; little boy. Bad day, bad day!" It was the fourth day and Job was trying to persuade Bill to tell him about the dreadful massacre of the Yosemite in the years gone by. The fitful firelight played about the solemn face which showed never a quiver as that night Bill told the story which made Job's blood run cold. [Illustration: Sentinel Rock.]