"Never mind, Kirtland, she 's all thar'. The furderest time 't I ever looked ahead," said the voice of Shamgar, "was once in war time. Flour fifteen dollars a barrel, seven girls and five boys (I know 't we don't raise no sech families here as they do in Californy), everything high. All to once the thought come to me, 'Mebbe herrin'll be high tew.' And sure enough herrin' was high!" "The furderest time 't I ever looked ahead----" deliciously began Captain Leezur. "G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye old skate!" Admiral 'S I Sums-it-up was turning his horse about. "I believe you and me 's got a bet on, ain't we, adm'r'l?" said Captain Pharo. "I told 'em 'twas wastin' waggin ile to come down here to c'lect. G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye old skate! 'S I sums it up, bet ye, goin' 'tween here and the Point I could scrape twenty-five pound o' mud off 'n yer kerridge time ye gits thar', Kobbe. G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye old skate!" His unbaffled monotone grew gradually faint in the distance. "Roads _be_ all porridge up there a piece, I reckon," chuckled Captain Pharo; "but as long as Crooked River runs, I don't calk'late to lose no bet. Poo! poo!" [Illustration: Music fragment: 'My days are as the grass, Or as--'] "Jest give me time," beamed Captain Leezur, sounding mellifluously, "'n' I can row any Pointer ashore in an argyment 't ever was born yit. I takes a moderate little spall to dew it in. Forced-to-go----" "Ye be a lazy, yarn-reelin' set, all on ye," said Captain Rafe, grinning with affection and delight on the group. "I'm going to have ye all posted and put on the teown!" Murmurs of rich and deep laughter. A tall, dark form, shifty-eyed, had been insensibly moving and disintegrating me from the group. I found myself drifting strangely ever farther and farther away. I was sitting beside him on a rock in the covert of the woods, the sun setting over the bay, and all was still save his voice. "I went to Californy minding" (mining), said he. "She ain't nothin' so wonderful of a State as you might think: she ain't no bigger 'n Maine 'n' New York and Alabamy, 'n' Afriky 'n' Bar Harbor all put into one!" "Great heavens!" said I, scratching my feeble little cane into the earth, "is she that?" Of all that had been denied him in the recent general conversation, of colossal hunks of salt, of grasshoppers "no larger than Dorking hens," of fishes, women, horses fabulous, I listened, rapt with wonder and admiration. The sun went down, the moon arose, and still I listened. I was not weary, I was not hungry; I was absorbed in sincere and awful attention. But the world is callous and cold, and I shall not repeat those tales. The world is callous and cold; but, as the shifty spectre at last pointed me, unwilling, homeward, he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "I never found sech an intellergent listener as you be--not in the whole length and breadth of Californy." VIII "VESTY 'S MARRIED"