nder the mining laws, but it would compel the adjacent
squatters like McKinstry, Davis, Masters, and Filgee, and jumpers like
the Harrisons, to buy the legal title, or defend a slow but
losing lawsuit. The holders of the grant--rich capitalists of San
Francisco--were open to compromise to those in actual possession, and
in the benefits of this compromise the unscrupulous "jumper," who had
neither sown nor reaped, but simply dispossessed the squatter who had
done both, shared equally with him.

A diversity of opinion as to the effect of the new claim naturally
obtained; the older settlers still clung to their experiences of an
easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and were sceptical both as to
the validity and justice of these revived alien grants; but the newer
arrivals hailed this certain tenure of legal titles as a guarantee to
capital and an incentive to improvement. There was also a growing and
influential party of Eastern and Northern men, who were not sorry to see
a fruitful source of dissension and bloodshed removed. The feuds of the
McKinstrys and Harrisons, kept alive over a boundary to which neither
had any legal claim, would seem to bring them hereafter within
the statute law regarding ordinary assaults without any ethical
mystification. On the other hand McKinstry and Harrison would each be
able to arrange any compromise with the new title holders for the
lands they possessed, or make over that "actual possession" for a
consideration. It was feared that both men, being naturally lawless,
would unite to render any legal eviction a long and dangerous process,
and that they would either be left undisturbed till the last, or would
force a profitable concession. But a greater excitement followed when it
was known that a section of the land had already been sold by the owners
of the grant, that this section exactly covered the debatable land of
the McKinstry-Harrison boundaries, and that the new landlord would at
once attempt its legal possession. The inspiration of genius that had
thus effected a division of the Harrison-McKinstry combination at its
one weak spot excited even the admiration of the sceptics. No one in
Indian Spring knew its real author, for the suit was ostensibly laid in
the name of a San Francisco banker. But the intelligent reader of
Johnny Filgee's late experience during the celebration will have already
recognized Uncle Ben as the man, and it becomes a part of this
veracious chronicle at this