and there about the woods. For three people all so old, so
bulky in body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could not but
surprise us by their extreme and almost imbecile youthfulness of spirit.
They were only going to stay ten minutes at the Toll House; had they not
twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? Stay to dinner?
Not they! Put up the horses? Never. Let us attach them to the veranda by
a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that
blustering day. And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved
irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew,
with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its
satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy
was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic
urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own
pleasure, nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the
same shrewd smirk. If the boy said there was "a hole there in the
hill"--a hole, pure and simple, neither more nor less--Kelmar and his
Jew girls would follow him a hundred yards to look complacently down
that hole. For two hours we looked for houses; and for two hours they
followed us, smelling trees, picking flowers, foisting false botany on
the unwary. Had we taken five, with that vile lad to head them off on
idle divagations, for five they would have smiled and stumbled through
the woods.

However, we came forth at length, and as by accident, upon a lawn,
sparse planted like an orchard, but with forest instead of fruit trees.
That was the site of Silverado mining town. A piece of ground was
levelled up, where Kelmar's store had been; and facing that we saw Rufe
Hanson's house, still bearing on its front the legend _Silverado Hotel_.
Not another sign of habitation. Silverado town had all been carted from
the scene; one of the houses was now the schoolhouse far down the road;
one was gone here, one there, but all were gone away. It was now a
sylvan solitude, and the silence was unbroken but by the great, vague
voice of the wind. Some days before our visit, a grizzly bear had been
sporting round the Hansons' chicken-house.

Mrs. Hanson was at home, alone, we found. Rufe had been out after a
"bar," had risen late, and was now gone, it did not clearly appear
whither. Perhaps he had had wind of Kelmar's coming, and was now
ensconced among the underwood, or watching