Brooks seemed to have discarded her ascetic shawl
forever. But as all this was contemporaneous with the absurd
rumor, that owing to the loneliness induced by the marriage of her
daughter she contemplated a similar change in her own condition, it
is deemed unworthy the serious consideration of this veracious
chronicle.
CAPTAIN JIM'S FRIEND.
I.
Hardly one of us, I think, really believed in the auriferous
probabilities of Eureka Gulch. Following a little stream, we had
one day drifted into it, very much as we imagined the river gold
might have done in remoter ages, with the difference that WE
remained there, while the river gold to all appearances had not.
At first it was tacitly agreed to ignore this fact, and we made the
most of the charming locality, with its rare watercourse that lost
itself in tangled depths of manzanita and alder, its laurel-choked
pass, its flower-strewn hillside, and its summit crested with
rocking pines.
"You see," said the optimistic Rowley, water's the main thing after
all. If we happen to strike river gold, thar's the stream for
washing it; if we happen to drop into quartz--and that thar rock
looks mighty likely--thar ain't a more natural-born site for a mill
than that right bank, with water enough to run fifty stamps. That
hillside is an original dump for your tailings, and a ready found
inclined road for your trucks, fresh from the hands of Providence;
and that road we're kalkilatin' to build to the turnpike will run
just easy along that ridge.
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