ll
to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the
external show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the
outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone,
desisted, from a lack of sympathy and appreciation,--not having,
perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment
of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Canyon, by this time clothed in funereal
drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the
red soil, stood in Indian-file along the track, trailing an uncouth
benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,
surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the
ferns by the roadside, as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to
gain a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, spreading
their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts
of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's
Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the
California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay
superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,
which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity,
had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we
approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a
recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of
assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed
throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and
deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the
board which served as a lid, and, mounting the little mound of earth
beside it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his
handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech; and they
disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner slowly, "has been running free
all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And
if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do? Why,
bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we