d citizen. He
actually associated himself with the leading church of the town and was
looked upon by the young men as a Californian who had succeeded.

Honest John Keeler, who was well acquainted with the type, as he
thought, could only remark, as his train sped westward, "There is a
sensible miner! One who has safely transferred his money from saloons
and gambling dens and robbers to the famous blue grass country. Good
luck to him!"

He had well-nigh forgotten the incident when Darcy was arrested three
years later.

A whole year had passed before Keeler returned home, discouraged. In the
meantime, as we shall see, the snows of the Sierras had not chilled the
budding affections of Mat Bailey; but the hot sun of another California
summer had stricken down old man Palmer. Keeler mistrusted that
something was wrong, as he had not heard from his old friend for several
months. Fortunately, his wife and child were well and happy, but they
had impatiently waited for his return. From them he had heard every week
or two.

At length he was safely back across the Sierras. The canon of the
American River had never seemed more terrible as the train hovered over
the brink of it. And now they were at Colfax, the junction of the narrow
gauge railroad, whence, at nine cents a mile, you travel northward to
Nevada City. The iron bars on the high, narrow windows of the station,
the low whistle of the little engine, like the lonesome cry of a wolf,
as it took the high trestle over Bear River, the very bars of dirt in
the river bed far below, proclaimed to John Keeler that he had returned
to the land of robbers and gold mining.

CHAPTER XI

The Snows of the Sierras

After the heat and turmoil of a day when the children have been
especially vexing, what mother does not smile in forgiveness upon the
peaceful faces of her offspring, whose characters in sleep appear as
spotless as the sheets which cover them? So smiled the sun upon the
grown-up children of the Sierras asleep under the winter snow. After the
heat and turmoil of the summer, the mad search for gold was over. Save
when there was a heavy snowstorm, the Graniteville stage traveled over
the mountains, as usual; but no highwayman molested it. It would have
been a practical impossibility for a robber to have made off with booty.
The snow was light and feathery, and the drifts were often twenty-five
feet deep. The web-footed snow-shoes of New England could not be used
wi