o several
generations, and walks off with the swag. No mystery THERE; nothing to
clear up; subsequent revelations only impertinence. Nothing for any
ghost to do--who meant business. More than that, over forty murders,
same old kind, committed every year in Calaveras, and no spiritual post
obits coming due every anniversary; no assessments made on the peace
and quiet of the surviving community. I tell you what, boys, I've
always been inclined to throw off on the Cave City ghost for that
alone. It's a bad precedent, sir. If that kind o' thing is going to
obtain in the foot-hills, we'll have the trails full of chaps formerly
knocked over by Mexicans and road agents; every little camp and grocery
will have stock enough on hand to go into business, and where's there
any security for surviving life and property, eh? What's your opinion,
Judge, as a fair-minded legislator?"

Of course there was no response. Yet it was part of the Doctor's
system of aggravation to become discursive at these moments, in the
hope of interruption, and he continued for some moments to dwell on the
terrible possibility of a state of affairs in which a gentleman could
no longer settle a dispute with an enemy without being subjected to
succeeding spiritual embarrassment. But all this digression fell upon
apparently inattentive ears.

"Well, sir, after the murder, the cabin stood for a long time deserted
and tenantless. Popular opinion was against it. One day a ragged
prospector, savage with hard labor and harder luck, came to the camp,
looking for a place to live and a chance to prospect. After the boys
had taken his measure, they concluded that he'd already tackled so much
in the way of difficulties that a ghost more or less wouldn't be of
much account. So they sent him to the haunted cabin. He had a big
yellow dog with him, about as ugly and as savage as himself; and the
boys sort o' congratulated themselves, from a practical view-point,
that while they were giving the old ruffian a shelter, they were
helping in the cause of Christianity against ghosts and goblins. They
had little faith in the old man, but went their whole pile on that dog.
That's where they were mistaken.

"The house stood almost three hundred feet from the nearest cave, and
on dark nights, being in a hollow, was as lonely as if it had been on
the top of Shasta. If you ever saw the spot when there was just moon
enough to bring out the little surrounding clumps of ch