The fire was replenished, pipes reloaded, and both the corporal and sergeant of the guard drew dearer to the hearth, so as to hear the ex-sergeant relate an incident that occurred to him on his way to the "diggings," the substance of which I have reduced, and endeavoured to render in a readable form. "You are all aware, boys," began the ex-sergeant, "that I deserted in a moment of temptation, and with Corporal--went to America. Soon after our arrival in New York, the corporal left me to go to some of his friends in the state of Ohio, and I was left to shift for myself, intending to get some kind of situation in New York. Having plenty of money, however, to keep me in idleness for some time, I joined a party of `gold-seekers,' who were going by the overland route to California. I formed one of six men. We had six horses, three pack-mules, and two dogs; and, although we journeyed for days with the heavy plodding ox-teams of the main body of our party, and intended to keep their company more or less all the way, yet we were equipped for, and intended to have some hunting and sport, diverging from the main track in the morning, and sometimes returning to it some distance ahead, so as to fall in with our party in the evening. Frequently, however, we missed the track; or, having game in view, we slept away from the main body. "One bright summer morning we were up and broke camp earlier than usual. Old Ben Walton, our captain and guide, to whom these wilds were home, had promised that this day we should strike the great buffalo trail, by which mighty herds of those animals migrate from their winter pasturage in the south to fatten on the prairies of Utah and Oregon. For several days we had been separated from the rest of the party, and found ourselves, according to Ben's calculation, on one of those great dry prairies that skirt the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, near the northern boundary of New Mexico; we were suffering from want of water, the last quart remaining in my canteen I had shared with my horse in the morning. It was now mid-day, and our course lay due east, beneath a broiling sun; the plain was dry and parched, and it seemed that if we could not get into the track of our head-quarters, or find water, both man and beast must soon give way. Old Ben promised us water within a few miles, and we jogged on as fast as we could urge our half-famished horses. About four o'clock in the afternoon we came upon one of those singular ravines which the spring floods wash out of the loose soil of these prairies; the banks were perpendicular, the ravine about twenty feet deep, and from twenty to thirty yards wide, and in the sand and gravel bottom we beheld the welcome water, not a running stream, but standing in small limpid pools. The sight was very cheering, yet still it was out of our reach; we turned our course to the south, down the bank of the ravine; continuing thus for near a mile, we came upon a