the mournful, the sad, but beautiful ghost of the great
golden days of the Sierras, a hand reached out and took Washee-Washee by
the queue as a man would take a tethered horse by the lariat.

The little man did not smile as before. He even struck back with his
little brown bony hands. He wound one of them in the Parson's beard, and
shouted aloud to the empty woods. The valor of honesty was on him.

However, kick as he might and shout as he could, it all did but little
good, and the Parson proceeded very coolly to take him by the two heels,
hold him up in the trail, and shake him in a smooth level part of it,
just as if he was about to empty a bag, and did not wish to waste the
contents.

Now the Parson was not at all vicious on this occasion; he had no wish
to harm the Chinaman: he only wished to help the Widow. He shook
Washee-Washee in perfect confidence that he would find all the gold
nuggets, half the spoons, and nearly all the household goods in the
little Widow's warm and sparely furnished room. He had not been a bit
surprised if he had shaken out the Widow's goods and wares, her
wash-tub, and clothes-line. "Ah, certainly," said the Parson, pausing,
to himself, "for is not Washee-Washee's line the clothes-line?"

Shake, shake, shake. It was of no use. Something had fallen from his
blue blouse, but it was not gold. He stood the little man down, with the
other end up, and was a bit angry that he did not go on smiling as
before.

He stooped, and picked up the little black object that had been shaken
from the brown little fellow before him. The Parson began to swear. It
was only a little ten-cent Testament, in diamond type, with a cloth
cover. The Parson put his head to one side, filliped the leaves with
his thumb and finger, and then, feeling perfectly certain that it did
not belong to any of the boys in the camp, and equally certain that it
was not an article that he cared to carry around loose with him, he
filliped the leaves again, and, handing it back to Washee-Washee, said,
"Git!"

The Parson took one end of the trail, and the little pagan the other.

A Missourian who lay in his bunk up against the wall, smoking his pipe
of "pigtail" after supper, looked out from his cabin window through the
wood and up towards the Parson's cabin, where the trail wound on the
hill-side above him.

"It's a thunderin' and a lightnin' like cats and dogs. There's a-gwyne
to be a storm to-night."

But it was only the Pars