ut his gettin' things on the kempany's credit?
Eh, speak up, some of ye!"

We were so utterly shocked and stupefied at the degradation of this
sudden and unexpected outburst from a man usually so honorable, gentle,
self-sacrificing, and forgiving, that we forgot the cause of it and
could only stare at each other. What was this cheap stranger, with his
shallow swindling tricks, to the ignoble change he had worked upon the
man before us. Rowley and Walker, both fearless fighters and quick to
resent an insult, only averted their saddened faces and turned aside
without a word.

"Ye dussen't say it! Well, hark to me then," he continued with white
and feverish lips. "I put him up to helpin' himself. I told him to
use the kempany's name for credit. Ye kin put that down to ME. And
when ye talk of HIS resigning, I want ye to understand that I resign
outer this rotten kempany and TAKE HIM WITH ME! Ef all the gold yer
lookin' for was piled up in that shaft from its bottom in hell to its
top in the gulch, it ain't enough to keep me here away from him! Ye
kin take all my share--all MY rights yer above ground and below it--all
I carry,"--he threw his buckskin purse and revolver on the
ground,--"and pay yourselves what you reckon you've lost through HIM.
But you and me is quits from to-day."

He strode away before a restraining voice or hand could reach him. His
dripping figure seemed to melt into the rain beneath the thickening
shadows of the pines, and the next moment he was gone. From that day
forward Eureka Gulch knew him no more. And the camp itself somehow
melted away during the rainy season, even as he had done.

II.

Three years had passed. The pioneer stage-coach was sweeping down the
long descent to the pastoral valley of Gilead, and I was looking
towards the village with some pardonable interest and anxiety. For I
carried in my pocket my letters of promotion from the box seat of the
coach--where I had performed the functions of treasure messenger for
the Excelsior Express Company--to the resident agency of that company
in the bucolic hamlet before me. The few dusty right-angled streets,
with their rigid and staringly new shops and dwellings, the stern
formality of one or two obelisk-like meeting-house spires, the
illimitable outlying plains of wheat and wild oats beyond, with their
monotony scarcely broken by skeleton stockades, corrals, and
barrack-looking farm buildings, were all certainly unlike the u