He also told any number of good stories, at which the boys, Whitey included, laughed heartily; he sang jolly songs, with a very fair tenor voice, and all the boys joined in the chorus; and he played a banjo in style, which always set the boys to capering as gracefully as a crowd of bachelor bears.

But still Whitey remained in camp and in office, and the captain, who was as humane as he was ambitious, had no idea of attempting to remove the old chief by force.

On Monday night the whole camp retired early, and slept soundly.  Monday had at all times a very short evening at Black Hat, for the boys were generally weary after the duties and excitements of Sunday; but on this particular Monday a slide had threatened on the hillside, and the boys had been hard at work cutting and carrying huge logs to make a break or barricade.

So, soon after supper they took a drink or two, and sprinkled to their several huts, and Black Hat was at peace, There were no dogs or cats to make night hideous—­no uneasy roosters to be sounding alarm at unearthly hours—­no horrible policemen thumping the sidewalks with clubs—­no fashionable or dissipated people rattling about in carriages.  Excepting an occasional cough, or sneeze, or over-loud snore, the most perfect peace reigned at Black Hat.

[Illustration:  THEY FOUND HIM SENSELESS, AND CARRIED HIM TO THE SALOON, WHERE THE CANDLES WERE ALREADY LIGHTED. ONE OF THE MINERS, WHO HAD BEEN A DOCTOR, PROMPTLY EXAMINED HIS BRUISES.]

Suddenly a low but heavy rumble, and a trembling of the ground, roused every man in camp, and, rushing out of their huts, the miners saw a mass of stones and earth had been loosened far up the hillside, and were breaking over the barricade in one place, and coming down in a perfect torrent.

They were fortunately moving toward the river on a line obstructed by no houses, though the hut of old Miller, who was very sick, was close to the rocky torrent.

But while they stared, a young pine-tree, perhaps a foot thick, which had been torn loose by the rocks and brought down by them, suddenly tumbled, root first, over a steep rock, a few feet in front of old Miller’s door.  The leverage exerted by the lower portion of the stem threw the whole tree into a vertical position for an instant; then it caught the wind, tottered, and finally fell directly on the front of old Miller’s hut, crushing in the gable and a portion of the front door, and threatening the hut and its unfortunate occupant with immediate destruction.

A deep groan and many terrible oaths burst from the boys, and then, with one impulse, they rushed to the tree and attempted to move it; but it lay at an angle of about forty-five degrees from the horizontal, its roots heavy with dirt, on the ground in front of the door, and its top high in the air.

The boys could only lift the lower portion; but should they do so, then the hut would be entirely crushed by the full weight of the tree.