amp be assured? Hadn't they promptly killed or
scared away every Chinaman who had ever trailed his celestial pig-tail
into the Flat? Hadn't they cut and beaten a trail to Placerville, so
that miners could take a run to that city when the Flat became too
quiet? Hadn't they framed the squarest betting code in the whole
diggings? And when a 'Frisco man basely attempted to break up the camp
by starting a gorgeous saloon a few miles up the creek, hadn't they gone
up in a body and cleared him out, giving him only ten minutes in which
to leave the creek for ever? All this they had done, actuated only by a
stern sense of duty, and in the patient anticipation of the reward which
traditionally crowns virtuous action. But now--oh, ingratitude of
republics!--a schoolteacher was to be forced upon Bottle Flat in spite
of all the protest which they, the oldest inhabitants, had made!

Such had been their plaint for days, but the sad excitement had not been
productive of any fights, for the few married men in the camp prudently
absented themselves at night from "The Nugget" saloon, where the matter
was fiercely discussed every evening. There was, therefore, such an
utter absence of diversity of opinion, that the most quarrelsome
searched in vain for provocation.

On the afternoon of the day on which the opening events of this story
occurred, the boys, by agreement, stopped work two hours earlier than
usual, for the stage usually reached Bottle Flat about two hours before
sundown, and the one of that day was to bring the hated teacher. The
boys had wellnigh given up the idea of further resistance, yet curiosity
has a small place even in manly bosoms, and they could at least _look_
hatred at the detested pedagogue. So about four o'clock they gathered at
The Nugget so suddenly, that several fathers; who were calmly drinking
inside, had barely time to escape through the back windows.

The boys drank several times before composing themselves into their
accustomed seats and leaning-places; but it was afterward asserted and
Southpaw--the one-armed bar-keeper--cited as evidence, that none of them
took sugar in their liquor. They subjected their sorrow to homeopathic
treatment by drinking only the most raw and rasping fluids that the bar
afforded.

The preliminary drinking over, they moodily whittled, chewed, and
expectorated; a stranger would have imagined them a batch of miserable
criminals awaiting transportation.

The silence was finall