on from the outer world. Besides the letters and dispatches
brought by hurried messengers and by coach from the Divide, there was
a crowd of guests and servants around the branch telegraph at the new
Heavy Tree post-office which was constantly augmenting. Added to the
natural anxiety of the deeply interested was the stimulated fever of the
few who wished to be "in the fashion." It was early rumored that a heavy
operator, a guest of the hotel, who was also a director in the telegraph
company, had bought up the wires for his sole use, that the dispatches
were doctored in his interests as a "bear," and there was wild talk
of lynching by the indignant mob. Passengers from Sacramento, San
Francisco, and Marysville brought incredible news and the wildest
sensations. Firm after firm had failed in the great cities. Old
established houses that dated back to the "spring of '49," and had
weathered the fires and inundations of their perilous Californian
infancy, collapsed before this mysterious, invisible, impalpable
breath of panic. Companies rooted in respectability and sneered at for
old-fashioned ways were discovered to have shamelessly speculated with
trusts! An eminent deacon and pillar of the church was found dead in
his room with a bullet in his heart and a damning confession on the desk
before him! Foreign bankers were sending their gold out of the country;
government would be appealed to to open the vaults of the Mint; there
would be an embargo on all bullion shipment! Nothing was too wild or
preposterous to be repeated or credited.

And with this fever of sordid passion the summer temperature had
increased. For the last two weeks the thermometer had stood abnormally
high during the day-long sunshine; and the metallic dust in the roads
over mineral ranges pricked the skin like red-hot needles. In the
deepest woods the aromatic sap stood in beads on felled logs and
splintered tree-shafts; even the mountain night breeze failed to cool
these baked and heated fastnesses. There were ominous clouds of smoke by
day that were pillars of fire by night along the distant valleys. Some
of the nearer crests were etched against the midnight sky by dull red
creeping lines like a dying firework. The great hotel itself creaked
and crackled and warped though all its painted, blistered, and veneered
expanse, and was filled with the stifling breath of desiccation. The
stucco cracked and crumbled away from the cornices; there were yawning
gap