he woman standing
tranquil in her silences. She was a holy terror!

V

Some months later a party of men and women belonging to the highest
social circles of San Francisco passed through Hurdy-Gurdy on their way
to the Yosemite Valley by a new trail. They halted for dinner and during
its preparation explored the desolate camp. One of the party had been at
Hurdy-Gurdy in the days of its glory. He had, indeed, been one of its
prominent citizens; and it used to be said that more money passed over
his faro table in any one night than over those of all his competitors
in a week; but being now a millionaire engaged in greater enterprises,
he did not deem these early successes of sufficient importance to merit
the distinction of remark. His invalid wife, a lady famous in San
Francisco for the costly nature of her entertainments and her exacting
rigor with regard to the social position and "antecedents" of those who
attended them, accompanied the expedition. During a stroll among the
shanties of the abandoned camp Mr. Porfer directed the attention of his
wife and friends to a dead tree on a low hill beyond Injun Creek.

"As I told you," he said, "I passed through this camp in 1852, and was
told that no fewer than five men had been hanged here by vigilantes at
different times, and all on that tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is
dangling from it yet. Let us go over and see the place."

Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in question was perhaps the very
one from whose fatal embrace his own neck had once had an escape so
narrow that an hour's delay in taking himself out of that region would
have spanned it.

Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a convenient crossing, the party
came upon the cleanly picked skeleton of an animal which Mr. Porfer
after due examination pronounced to be that of an ass. The
distinguishing ears were gone, but much of the inedible head had been
spared by the beasts and birds, and the stout bridle of horsehair was
intact, as was the riata, of similar material, connecting it with a
picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. The wooden and metallic
elements of a miner's kit lay near by. The customary remarks were made,
cynical on the part of the men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A
little later they stood by the tree in the cemetery and Mr. Porfer
sufficiently unbent from his dignity to place himself beneath the rotten
rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his neck, somewhat, it
appe