ers whom he
thought unconscious of its proper, value, it was fair enough for my
Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, if he was unconscious
of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent in the matter of his
brother's mote.

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

There were four of us squatters--myself and my wife, the King and Queen
of Silverado; Lloyd, the Crown Prince; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke.
Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough
life. He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart
was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rock necessary
of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in
ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if
he had seen a flute, I am sure he could have played upon it by nature.
It may seem hard to say it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat.

The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold provender for
immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a double buggy; the crown
prince, on horseback, led the way like an outrider. Bags and boxes and a
second-hand stove were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson's team.

It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure. Not a leaf
moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. Only from the summit of the
mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another kept detaching
itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some high
stream of air: Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making
the weather, like a Lapland witch.

By noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown building,
half-way up the hill, big as a factory, two stories high, and with tanks
and ladders along the roof; which, as a pendicle of Silverado mine, we
held to be an outlying province of our own. Thither, then, we went,
crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the
basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we ate, at
this great bulk of useless building. Through a chink we could look far
down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and
striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery. It cost six
thousand dollars, twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it
stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy
millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there, mill and
mill town showed no sign of li