A roar of Homeric laughter went up from the party.  Clarence looked up, stung and startled, but caught a single glimpse of Jim Hooker’s face that made him forget his own mortification.  In its hopeless, heart-sick, and utterly beaten dejection—­the first and only real expression he had seen on it—­he read the dreadful truth.  Jim’s reputation had ruined him!  The one genuine and striking episode of his life, the one trustworthy account he had given of it, had been unanimously accepted as the biggest and most consummate lie of his record!

CHAPTER VII

With this incident of the hunt closed, to Clarence, the last remembered episode of his journey.  But he did not know until long after that it had also closed to him what might have been the opening of a new career.  For it had been Judge Peyton’s intention in adopting Susy to include a certain guardianship and protection of the boy, provided he could get the consent of that vague relation to whom he was consigned.  But it had been pointed out by Mrs. Peyton and her brother that Clarence’s association with Jim Hooker had made him a doubtful companion for Susy, and even the Judge himself was forced to admit that the boy’s apparent taste for evil company was inconsistent with his alleged birth and breeding.  Unfortunately, Clarence, in the conviction of being hopelessly misunderstood, and that dogged acquiescence to fate which was one of his characteristics, was too proud to correct the impression by any of the hypocracies of childhood.  He had also a cloudy instinct of loyalty to Jim in his disgrace, without, however, experiencing either the sympathy of an equal or the zeal of a partisan, but rather—­if it could be said of a boy of his years—­with the patronage and protection of a superior.  So he accepted without demur the intimation that when the train reached California he would be forwarded from Stockton with an outfit and a letter of explanation to Sacramento, it being understood that in the event of not finding his relative he would return to the Peytons in one of the southern valleys, where they elected to purchase a tract of land.

With this outlook, and the prospect of change, independence, and all the rich possibilities that to the imagination of youth are included in them, Clarence had found the days dragging.  The halt at Salt Lake, the transit of the dreary Alkali desert, even the wild passage of the Sierras, were but a blurred picture in his memory.  The sight of eternal snows and the rolling of endless ranks of pines, the first glimpse of a hillside of wild oats, the spectacle of a rushing yellow river that to his fancy seemed tinged with gold, were momentary excitements, quickly forgotten.  But when, one morning, halting at the outskirts of a struggling settlement, he found the entire party eagerly gathered around a passing stranger, who had taken from his saddle-bags a small buckskin pouch to show them a double handful of shining scales of