He accordingly went to a livery stable and ordered a landau and pair, with a negro coachman.  Seated in it, in his best and most ill-fitting clothes, he asked the coachman to take him to the Presidio, and leaned back in the cushions as they drove through the streets with such an expression of beaming gratification on his good-humored face that the passers-by smiled at the equipage and its extravagant occupant.  To them it seemed the not unusual sight of the successful miner “on a spree.”  To the unsophisticated Uncle Billy their smiling seemed only a natural and kindly recognition of his happiness, and he nodded and smiled back to them with unsuspecting candor and innocent playfulness.  “These yer ’Frisco fellers ain’t all slouches, you bet,” he added to himself half aloud, at the back of the grinning coachman.

Their way led through well-built streets to the outskirts, or rather to that portion of the city which seemed to have been overwhelmed by shifting sand-dunes, from which half-submerged fences and even low houses barely marked the line of highway.  The resistless trade-winds which had marked this change blew keenly in his face and slightly chilled his ardor.  At a turn in the road the sea came in sight, and sloping towards it the great Cemetery of Lone Mountain, with white shafts and marbles that glittered in the sunlight like the sails of ships waiting to be launched down that slope into the Eternal Ocean.  Uncle Billy shuddered.  What if it had been his fate to seek Uncle Jim there!

“Dar’s yar Presidio!” said the negro coachman a few moments later, pointing with his whip, “and dar’s yar Wash’woman’s Bay!”

Uncle Billy stared.  A huge quadrangular fort of stone with a flag flying above its battlements stood at a little distance, pressed against the rocks, as if beating back the encroaching surges; between him and the fort but farther inland was a lagoon with a number of dilapidated, rudely patched cabins or cottages, like stranded driftwood around its shore.  But there was no mansion, no block of houses, no street, not another habitation or dwelling to be seen!

Uncle Billy’s first shock of astonishment was succeeded by a feeling of relief.  He had secretly dreaded a meeting with his old partner in the “haunts of fashion;” whatever was the cause that made Uncle Jim seek this obscure retirement affected him but slightly; he even was thrilled with a vague memory of the old shiftless camp they had both abandoned.  A certain instinct—­he knew not why, or less still that it might be one of delicacy—­made him alight before they reached the first house.  Bidding the carriage wait, Uncle Billy entered, and was informed by a blowzy Irish laundress at a tub that Jim Foster, or “Arkansaw Jim,” lived at the fourth shanty “beyant.”  He was at home, for “he’d shprained his fut.”  Uncle Billy hurried on, stopped before the door of a shanty scarcely less rude than their old cabin, and half timidly pushed it open.  A growling voice