He read the Bible incessantly, yet offended alike the pious saints and critical sinners by never preaching or exhorting.  And out of everything Jim Hockson seemed to extract what it contained of the ideal and the beautiful; and when he saw Millicent Botayne, he straightway adored the first woman he had met who was alike beautiful, intelligent and refined.  Miss Millie, being human, was pleased by the admiration of the handsome, manly fellow who seemed so far the superior of the men of his class; but when, in his honest simplicity, he told her that he loved her, she declined his further attentions in a manner which, though very delicate and kind, opened Jim’s blue eyes to some sad things he had never seen before.

He neither got drunk, nor threatened to kill himself, nor married the first silly girl he met; but he sensibly left the place where he had suffered so greatly, and, in a sort of sad daze, he hurried off to hide himself in the newly discovered gold-fields of California.  Perhaps he had suddenly learned certain properties of gold which were heretofore unknown to him; at any rate, it was soon understood at Spanish Stake, where he had located himself, that Jim Hockson got out more gold per week than any man in camp, and that it all went to San Francisco.

“Kind of a mean cuss, I reckon,” remarked a newcomer, one day at the saloon, when Jim alone, of the crowd present, declined to drink with him.

“Not any!” replied Colonel Two, so called because he had two eyes, while another colonel in the camp had but one.  “An’ it’s good for you, stranger,” continued the colonel, “that you ain’t been long in camp, else some of the boys ‘ud put a hole through you for sayin’ anything ’gainst Jim; for we all swear by him, we do.  He don’t carry shootin’-irons, but no feller in camp dares to tackle him; he don’t cuss nobody, but ev’rybody does just as he asks ’em to.  As to drinkin’, why, I’d swear off myself, ef ’twud make me hold a candle to him.  Went to old Bermuda t’other day, when he was ravin’ tight and layin’ for Butcher Pete with a shootin’-iron, an’ he actilly talked Bermuda into soakin’ his head an’ turnin’ in—­ev’rybody else was afeared to go nigh old Bermuda that day.”

The newcomer seemed gratified to learn that Jim was so peaceable a man—­that was the natural supposition, at least—­for he forthwith cultivated Jim with considerable assiduity, and being, it was evident, a man of considerable taste and experience, Jim soon found his companionship very agreeable and he lavished upon his new acquaintance, who had been nicknamed Tarpaulin, the many kind and thoughtful attentions which had endeared Jim to the other miners.

The two men lived in the same hut, staked claims adjoining each other, and Tarpaulin, who had been thin and nervous-looking when he first came to camp, began to grow peaceable and plump under Jim’s influence.

One night, as Jim and Tarpaulin lay chatting before a fire in their hut, they heard a thin, wiry voice in the next hut inquiring: