The third laugh had roused old Van Quintem from a nice nap, and he came out on the piazza.

“Hallo, Mr. Carpenter! what are you doing there?” said he, good-naturedly.

A few words from the supposed carpenter defined his position, and threw old Van Quintem into the appropriate state of amazement.  Looking at the shaggy face by a variety of lights, he soon came to recognize it as that of his niece’s husband, whom he had seen a few times on his yearly visits to the country, before his farming brother, Nicholas Van Quintem, father of Mrs. Frump, had died.

“From the way Gusty hangs to you, I judge you are no ghost,” said old Van Quintem, when he had partly recovered his senses.

“No more than I am a carpenter,” was the dry response.

“But how does it happen that you are no ghost?” asked old Van Quintem, with fearful interest.

This was what everybody wanted to know; and so Mr. Frump, supporting his wife by the waist, while she, apparently half stupefied, reposed her head on his shoulder, explained the mystery of his appearance.  He had been severely injured in a drunken quarrel about a claim—­he would not deny that; and, taking off his broad-brimmed hat, he showed the two deep scars extending from his eyebrows to the roots of his hair.  He was left on the ground for dead, and his assailants ran away.  The enterprising correspondent of three San Francisco papers saw him when he was first found, and, learning that he would undoubtedly die, the enterprising correspondent regarded him as already sufficiently dead for newspaper purposes, and sent three thrilling accounts of his butchery, written up with ingenious variations, to the three journals of which he was the indefatigable “special.”  In a few days, the nearly murdered man was out of danger.  On learning that the news of his death had already been sent to the papers, the singular idea came into his mind to let the report go uncontradicted, change his name, give up drinking, move away to some place where he was not known, and begin his miner’s life over again.  The special correspondent, on being consulted by him, assured Mr. Frump that he could depend on his (the correspondent’s) silence, since it was his invariable practice never to take back or qualify any statement made by him—­such a course being obviously fatal to his hard-earned reputation for accuracy.  The correspondent also very obligingly supplied him with copies of the papers containing the circumstantial accounts of his death, which he directed in a disguised hand, and sent through the mail to his wife.  He had then assumed another name, gone into Benicia County, was successful in gold digging, and, after making about two thousand dollars, had taken up his residence in the nearest village (undesignated), and had invested his money in speculations (kind not particularized).  Fortune followed him, but he found it convenient, for certain reasons (not given), to move away to another village, in a few months.  In fact, he had, within four years, made the entire circuit of California, never staying in one place more than a quarter of a year.