Then the time came for parting.  We were standing by the door of the coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Bones was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the interior, and apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers.  Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, “Good dog,” with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped into the coach.

The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold vehicle bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow dog danced in and out of it to the very outskirts of the settlement.  And then he soberly returned.

A day or two later he was missed—­but the fact was afterward known that he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston lived, and he was forgiven.  A week afterward he was missed again, but this time for a longer period, and then a pathetic letter arrived from Sacramento for the storekeeper’s wife.

“Would you mind,” wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, “asking some of your boys to come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones?  I don’t mind having the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where everyone knows me; but here he does make one so noticeable, on account of his color.  I’ve got scarcely a frock that he agrees with.  He don’t go with my pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint he makes three shades lighter.  You know yellow is so trying.”

A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a deputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl.  We were all quite indignant with Bones—­but, oddly enough, I think it was greatly tempered with our new pride in him.  While he was with us alone, his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent phrase “that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers” gave us a mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a “mascot” in some zoological curiosity.

This was further indicated by a singular occurrence.  A new church had been built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come from San Francisco to preach the opening sermon.  After a careful examination of the camp’s wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of apparel, a few of us were deputed to represent “Rattlers” at the Sunday service.  In our white ducks, straw hats, and flannel blouses, we were sufficiently picturesque and distinctive as “honest miners” to be shown off in one of the front pews.

Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books—­in the cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and blown over by the spices of our own woods through the open windows, a deep sense of the abiding peace of Christian communion settled upon us.  At this supreme moment someone murmured in an awe-stricken whisper: