after this speech, glared savagely around, walked down
the crowded gang-plank with a rigid and aggressive shoulder, picked a
quarrel with his cabman, and, after bundling that functionary into his
own vehicle, took the reins himself, and drove furiously to his hotel.
"It cost me," said Bill, recounting the occurrence somewhat later at
Angel's,--"it cost me a matter o' twenty dollars afore the jedge the
next mornin'; but you kin bet high thet I taught them 'Frisco chaps
suthin new about drivin'. I didn't make it lively in Montgomery Street
for about ten minutes,--O no!"

And so by degrees the two original locaters of the great Cinnabar lode
faded from the memory of Angel's, and Calaveras knew them no more. In
five years their very names had been forgotten; in seven the name of the
town was changed; in ten the town itself was transported bodily to the
hillside, and the chimney of the Union Smelting Works by night flickered
like a corpse-light over the site of Johnson's cabin, and by day
poisoned the pure spices of the pines. Even the Mansion House was
dismantled, and the Wingdam stage deserted the highway for a shorter cut
by Quicksilver City. Only the bared crest of Deadwood Hill, as of
old, sharply cut the clear blue sky, and at its base, as of old, the
Stanislaus River, unwearied and unresting, babbled, whispered, and
hurried away to the sea.

A midsummer's day was breaking lazily on the Atlantic. There was not
wind enough to move the vapors in the foggy offing, but where the vague
distance heaved against a violet sky there were dull red streaks that,
growing brighter, presently painted out the stars. Soon the brown rocks
of Greyport appeared faintly suffused, and then the whole ashen line of
dead coast was kindled, and the lighthouse beacons went out one by one.
And then a hundred sail, before invisible, started out of the vapory
horizon, and pressed toward the shore. It was morning, indeed, and some
of the best society in Greyport, having been up all night, were thinking
it was time to go to bed.

For as the sky flashed brighter it fired the clustering red roofs of
a picturesque house by the sands that had all that night, from open
lattice and illuminated balcony, given light and music to the shore.
It glittered on the broad crystal spaces of a great conservatory that
looked upon an exquisite lawn, where all night long the blended odors
of sea and shore had swooned under the summer moon. But it wrought
confusion