ere wasn't a man to be found who could play upon the instrument.
Goskin began to realize that he had a losing speculation on his hands. He
had a fiddler, and a Mexican who thrummed a guitar. A pianist would have
made his orchestra complete. One day a three-card-monte player told a
friend confidentially that he could "knock any amount of music out of the
piano, if he only had it alone a few hours to get his hand in." This
report spread about the camp, but on being questioned he vowed that he
didn't know a note of music. It was noted, however, as a suspicious
circumstance, that he often hung about the instrument and looked upon it
longingly, like a hungry man gloating over a beef-steak in a restaurant
window. There was no doubt but that this man had music in his soul,
perhaps in his finger-ends, but did not dare to make trial of his strength
after the rules of harmony had suffered so many years of neglect. So the
fiddler kept on with his jigs, and the greasy Mexican pawed his discordant
guitar, but no man had the nerve to touch the piano. There were doubtless
scores of men in the camp who would have given ten ounces of gold-dust to
have been half an hour alone with it, but every man's nerve shrank from
the jeers which the crowd would shower upon him should his first attempt
prove a failure. It got to be generally understood that the hand which
first essayed to draw music from the keys must not slouch its work.

* * * * *

It was Christmas eve, and Goskin, according to his custom, had decorated
his gambling-hell with sprigs of mountain cedar and a shrub whose crimson
berries did not seem a bad imitation of English holly. The piano was
covered with evergreens, and all that was wanting to completely fill the
cup of Goskin's contentment was a man to play the instrument.

"Christmas night, and no piano-pounder," he said. "This is a nice country
for a Christian to live in."

Getting a piece of paper, he scrawled:

$20 REWARD
TO A COMPETENT PIANO PLAYER

This he stuck up on the music-rack, and though the inscription glared at
the frequenters of the room until midnight, it failed to draw any musician
from his shell.

So the merrymaking went on; the hilarity grew apace. Men danced and sang
to the music of the squeaky fiddle and worn-out guitar as the jolly crowd
within tried to drown the howling of the storm without. Suddenly they
became aware of the presence of a white-haired man, crouchi