y-Gurdy, for whom he had performed the last kindly office at the
cemetery, made room for him among them, and he rested well.

IV

Having finished staking off his claim Mr. Doman walked back to the
centre of it and stood again at the spot where his search among the
graves had expired in the exclamation, "Scarry." He bent again over the
headboard that bore that name and as if to reinforce the senses of sight
and hearing ran his forefinger along the rudely carved letters.
Re-erecting himself he appended orally to the simple inscription the
shockingly forthright epitaph, "She was a holy terror!"

Had Mr. Doman been required to make these words good with proof--as,
considering their somewhat censorious character, he doubtless should
have been--he would have found himself embarrassed by the absence of
reputable witnesses, and hearsay evidence would have been the best he
could command. At the time when Scarry had been prevalent in the mining
camps thereabout--when, as the editor of the _Hurdy Herald_ would have
phrased it, she was "in the plenitude of her power"--Mr. Doman's
fortunes had been at a low ebb, and he had led the vagrantly laborious
life of a prospector. His time had been mostly spent in the mountains,
now with one companion, now with another. It was from the admiring
recitals of these casual partners, fresh from the various camps, that
his judgment of Scarry had been made up; he himself had never had the
doubtful advantage of her acquaintance and the precarious distinction of
her favor. And when, finally, on the termination of her perverse career
at Hurdy-Gurdy he had read in a chance copy of the _Herald_ her
column-long obituary (written by the local humorist of that lively sheet
in the highest style of his art) Doman had paid to her memory and to her
historiographer's genius the tribute of a smile and chivalrously
forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side of this mountain Messalina
he recalled the leading events of her turbulent career, as he had heard
them celebrated at his several campfires, and perhaps with an
unconscious attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy
terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that
moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted
tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind
about the matter with an approving croak.

Pursuing his discovery of free gold with great zeal, which he probably
credit