their brightest wares through plate-glass windows; a jeweler’s glittered with precious stones; a fashionable apothecary’s next to it almost outrivaled it with its gorgeous globes, the gold and green precision of its shelves, and the marble and silver soda fountain like a shrine before it.  All this specious show of opulence came upon him with the shock of contrast, and with it a bitter revulsion of feeling more hopeless than his feverish anxiety,—­the bitterness of disappointment.

For during his journey he had been buoyed up with the prospect of finding work and sympathy in this youthful city,—­a prospect founded solely on his inexperienced hopes.  For this he had exchanged the poverty of the mining district,—­a poverty that had nothing ignoble about it, that was a part of the economy of nature, and shared with his fellow men and the birds and beasts in their rude encampments.  He had given up the brotherhood of the miner, and that practical help and sympathy which brought no degradation with it, for this rude shock of self-interested, self-satisfied civilization.  He, who would not have shrunk from asking rest, food, or a night’s lodging at the cabin of a brother miner or woodsman, now recoiled suddenly from these well-dressed citizens.  What madness had sent him here, an intruder, or, even, as it seemed to him in his dripping clothes, an impostor?  And yet these were the people to whom he had confidently expected to tell his story, and who would cheerfully assist him with work!  He could almost anticipate the hard laugh or brutal hurried negative in their faces.  In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it.  Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion overtook him.  He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once or twice, and even heard the epithet “drunken lout” from one who had run against him.

He found himself presently staring vacantly in the apothecary’s window.  How long he stood there he could not tell, for he was aroused only by the door opening in front of him, and a young girl emerging with some purchase in her hand.  He could see that she was handsomely dressed and quite pretty, and as she passed out she lifted to his withdrawing figure a pair of calm, inquiring eyes, which, however, changed to a look of half-wondering, half-amused pity as she gazed.  Yet that look of pity stung his pride more deeply than all.  With a deliberate effort he recovered his energy.  No, he would not beg, he would not ask assistance from these people; he would go back—­anywhere!  To the steamboat first; they might let him sleep there, give him a meal, and allow him to work his passage back to Stockton.  He might be refused.  Well, what then?  Well, beyond, there was the bay!  He laughed bitterly—­his mind was sane enough for that—­but he kept on repeating it vaguely to himself, as he crossed the street again, and once more made his way to the wharf.