epest emotion passed over the crowd like the wind over
grain on the far-reaching prairies. The meeting broke up with cheers
and hisses, and men went out to face a fight at the polls that was
talked of for many a long day afterward.

The ringing of the old church bell at dark on election day, the cheers
sounding everywhere up and down the streets, the sour, scowling faces
of Col. Dick and Dan as they slunk down the alley and in back of the
Monte Carlo, told a story which thrilled the hearts of good
citizens--that righteousness and good government had won.

That night, between midnight and dawn, Andrew Malden's lumber mill
went up in flame and smoke. Who did it? No one knew; no one doubted.
The north wind was blowing, and the mill hands worked vigorously,
worked heroically--it meant bread and butter to them--but they could
not save it. Only great heaps of ashes, twisted iron, a lone
smoke-stack and great piles of ruined machinery, were left to tell the
story, where for many years the whirl of industry had made music
beside Pine Tree Creek.

Yet the man who had once sworn to shoot his enemy at sight uttered no
complaint or showed the least spirit of revenge. He came and stood in
the night air and watched the flames lick up the old mill, stood with
the ruddy glow lighting up his furrowed face, and with never a word
turned and went home.

Dan was drifting further and further into the downward life; and yet,
strange to say, it had lost its charm for him. That night when the
election failed and Col. Dick scored him for not doing his best, he
parted company with the Colonel and the Monte Carlo. More and more
strongly two passions ruled his life. One was love for Jane Reed; the
love of a man conscious of his own utter badness for that holy life he
secretly envies and outwardly scorns. The other was hatred for Job
Malden, who, ever since he came upon the stage in the long ago, had
stood between Daniel Dean and all his ambitions.

So the world moved on, the world of Grizzly county, hid away among the
grand old mountains and lofty pines of the Sierras. Impulses were
passing into deeds; actions and thoughts were crystallizing into
character--character that should endure when the pines had passed into
dust, when the mountains had tottered beneath the hand of the Creator,
when earth itself had sunk into endless space and the story of Gold
City had forever ended.

[Illustration: (decoration)]

CHAPTER XXI.

THE YOSEMIT