t somehow Jim seemed to
consider himself his best company.

His mackerel lines were worked as briskly as any others when the fish
were biting; but when the fish were gone, he would lean idly on the
rail, and stare at the waves and clouds; he could work a cranberry-bog
so beautifully that the people for miles around came to look on and take
lessons; yet, when the sun tried to hide in the evening behind a ragged
row of trees on a ridge beyond Jim's cranberry-patch, he would lean on
his spade, and gaze until everything about him seemed yellow.

He read the Bible incessantly, yet offended alike the pious saints and
critical sinners by never preaching or exhorting. And out of everything
Jim Hockson seemed to extract what it contained of the ideal and the
beautiful; and when he saw Millicent Botayne, he straightway adored the
first woman he had met who was alike beautiful, intelligent and refined.
Miss Millie, being human, was pleased by the admiration of the
handsome, manly fellow who seemed so far the superior of the men of his
class; but when, in his honest simplicity, he told her that he loved
her, she declined his further attentions in a manner which, though very
delicate and kind, opened Jim's blue eyes to some sad things he had
never seen before.

He neither got drunk, nor threatened to kill himself, nor married the
first silly girl he met; but he sensibly left the place where he had
suffered so greatly, and, in a sort of sad daze, he hurried off to hide
himself in the newly discovered gold-fields of California. Perhaps he
had suddenly learned certain properties of gold which were heretofore
unknown to him; at any rate, it was soon understood at Spanish Stake,
where he had located himself, that Jim Hockson got out more gold per
week than any man in camp, and that it all went to San Francisco.

"Kind of a mean cuss, I reckon," remarked a newcomer, one day at the
saloon, when Jim alone, of the crowd present, declined to drink with
him.

"Not any!" replied Colonel Two, so called because he had two eyes, while
another colonel in the camp had but one. "An' it's good for _you_,
stranger," continued the colonel, "that you ain't been long in camp,
else some of the boys 'ud put a hole through you for sayin' anything
'gainst Jim; for we all swear by him, _we_ do. He don't carry
shootin'-irons, but no feller in camp dares to tackle him; he don't cuss
nobody, but ev'rybody does just as he asks 'em to. As to drinkin', why,
I'