ur and
romance of the gold fields have long since departed. On the morning
mentioned traffic was light, for people did not travel the twenty-eight
miles through heat and dust to Nevada City for pleasure. Too often it
was a case of running the gauntlet from the gold fields to the railroad
terminus and safety.

This very morning, Charley Chu, who had thrown up his job as mender of
ditches, was making a dash for San Francisco, with five hundred dollars
in dust and a pistol at his belt. The other passengers were Dr. John
Mason and Mamie Slocum, teacher. Mamie, rosy-cheeked, dark-eyed, and
pretty, was only seventeen, and ought to have been at home with her
mother. She was a romantic girl, however, with several beaux in Eureka
Township; and now that the summer session of school was over, she was
going home to Nevada City, where there were other conquests to be made.

Dr. Mason, a tall, lean Scotchman, lived at North Bloomfield, only nine
miles distant, whence he had been summoned to attend a case of _delirium
tremens_. The sparkling water of the Sierras is pure and cold, but the
gold of the Sierras buys stronger drink. With a fee of two double eagles
in his pocket, the doctor could look with charity upon the foibles of
human nature. He thoroughly enjoyed the early morning ride among the
giant pines. In the open places manzanita ran riot, its waxy green
leaves contrasting with the dust-laden asters and coarse grasses by the
roadside. Across the canon of the Middle Yuba the yellow earth of old
man Palmer's diggings shone like a trademark in the landscape,
proclaiming to the least initiated the leading industry of Sierra and
Nevada Counties, and marking for the geologist the height of the ancient
river beds, twenty-five hundred feet above the Middle Yuba and nearly at
right angles to it. Those ancient river beds were strewn with gold.
Looking in the other direction, one caught glimpses here and there of
the back-bone of the Sierras, jagged dolomites rising ten thousand feet
skyward. The morning air was stimulating, for at night the thermometer
drops to the forties even in midsummer. In a ditch by the roadside, and
swift as a mill-race, flowed a stream of clear cold water, brought for
miles from reservoirs up in the mountains.

Even Charley Chu, now that he was leaving the gold fields forever,
regarded the water-ditch with affection. It brought life--sparkling,
abundant life--to these arid hill-tops. Years ago, Charley Chu and