Essex gave him a return good night and the door closed on him. The younger man cogitated over his books for a space. It did not strike him as interesting or remarkable that Shackleton should have had an unacknowledged child, of whose existence George Harney, the drunken job-printer, knew. He was becoming accustomed to the extraordinary intermingling of classes and conditions that marked the pioneer period of California life. But should the unacknowledged child attempt to establish its claim to part of the great estate left by the bonanza king, what a complication that might lead to! These Californians were certainly a picturesque people, with their dramatic ups and downs of fortune, their disdain of accepted standards, their indifference to tradition, and their magnificently disreputable pasts. As one of the special writers of _The Trumpet_, Essex attended the funeral of his chief. He and Mrs. Willers and Edna, in company with the young woman who did the “Fashions and Foibles” column, were in one of the carriages that Mariposa had seen from the hilltop. Mrs. Willers was silent on the long, slow drive. She had honored her chief, who had been just to her. Miss Peebles, the “Fashions and Foibles” young woman, was so engrossed by her fears that a change of ownership in _The Trumpet_ would rob her of her employment that she could talk of nothing else. To Edna, the sensation of being in a carriage was so novel it occupied her to the exclusion of all other matters, and she looked out of the window with a face of sparkling interest. That evening, after the funeral, Essex was preparing to work late. He had “gutted” the pile of books, and with their contents well assimilated was ready to write his three columns. There was no car line on the street, and traffic at that hour on that quiet thoroughfare was over for the day. For an hour he wrote easily and fluently. The sheets, glistening with damp ink, were pushed in front of him in a careless pile. Now and then he paused to consult his books, which were arranged round him on the table, open at the places he needed for reference. The smoke wreaths were thick round his head and the room was hot. It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the noisy entrance of his fellow lodger. Harney was evidently sufficiently well to go to work again and to come home drunk. Essex listened with suspended pen and a half-smile on his dark face, which turned to a frown as he realized that the stumbling feet had turned his way. The knock on the door came next, and simultaneously it opened and Harney’s head was thrust in. “What the devil do you want?” said the scribe, sitting erect, his pipe in his hand, the other waving the smoke strata that hung before his face. “Let me come and get warm a minute. I’m wheezing again, and my room’s cold as a tomb. Don’t mind me--all I want is to set before the fire for a spell.”