e explanation of his
partner's, or, more terrible, if he had shown some "low" and incredible
intimation of taking his partner's extravagant bet as REAL and binding.
In this distress he wrote to Uncle Jim an appealing and apologetic
letter, albeit somewhat incoherent and inaccurate, and bristling
with misspelling, camp slang, and old partnership jibes. But to this
elaborate epistle he received only Uncle Jim's repeated assurances of
his own bright prospects, and his hopes that his old partner would be
more fortunate, single-handed, on the old claim. For a whole week or two
Uncle Billy sulked, but his invincible optimism and good humor got the
better of him, and he thought only of his old partner's good fortune.
He wrote him regularly, but always to one address--a box at the San
Francisco post-office, which to the simple-minded Uncle Billy suggested
a certain official importance. To these letters Uncle Jim responded
regularly but briefly.

From a certain intuitive pride in his partner and his affection, Uncle
Billy did not show these letters openly to the camp, although he spoke
freely of his former partner's promising future, and even read them
short extracts. It is needless to say that the camp did not accept Uncle
Billy's story with unsuspecting confidence. On the contrary, a hundred
surmises, humorous or serious, but always extravagant, were afloat in
Cedar Camp. The partners had quarreled over their clothes--Uncle Jim,
who was taller than Uncle Billy, had refused to wear his partner's
trousers. They had quarreled over cards--Uncle Jim had discovered that
Uncle Billy was in possession of a "cold deck," or marked pack. They had
quarreled over Uncle Billy's carelessness in grinding up half a box
of "bilious pills" in the morning's coffee. A gloomily imaginative
mule-driver had darkly suggested that, as no one had really seen Uncle
Jim leave the camp, he was still there, and his bones would yet be found
in one of the ditches; while a still more credulous miner averred that
what he had thought was the cry of a screech-owl the night previous to
Uncle Jim's disappearance, might have been the agonized utterance of
that murdered man. It was highly characteristic of that camp--and,
indeed, of others in California--that nobody, not even the ingenious
theorists themselves, believed their story, and that no one took the
slightest pains to verify or disprove it. Happily, Uncle Billy never
knew it, and moved all unconsciously in th