He was looking from the window.  “Coom,” he said, “ve are near der blace.  I vill show id to you.”  He rose and passed out to the rear platform.  We were in the rear car, and a new panorama of the lake and mountains flashed upon us at every curve of the line.  I followed him.  Presently he pointed to what appeared to be a sheer wall of rock and stunted vegetation towering two or three thousand feet above us, which started out of a gorge we were passing.  “Dere it vos!” he said.  I saw the vast stretch of rock face rising upward and onward, but nothing else.  No debris, no ruins, nor even a swelling or rounding of the mountain flank over that awful tomb.  Yet, stay! as we dashed across the gorge, and the face of the mountain shifted, high up, the sky-line was slightly broken as if a few inches, a mere handful, of the crest was crumbled away.  And then—­both gorge and mountain vanished.

I was still embarrassed and uneasy, and knew not what to say to this man at my side, whose hopes and ambition had been as quickly overthrown and buried, and whose life-dream had as quickly vanished.  But he himself, taking his pipe from his lips, broke the silence.

“It vos a narrow esgabe!”

“What was?”

“Vy, dis dings.  If I had stayed in my fader’s house, I vould haf been det for goot, and perried too!  Somedimes dose dings cooms oudt apout right, don’t id?”

Unvanquished philosopher!  As we stood there looking at the flying landscape and sinking lesser hills, one by one the great snow peaks slowly arose behind them, lifting themselves, as if to take a last wondering look at the man they had triumphed over, but had not subdued.

THE PASSING OF ENRIQUEZ

When Enriquez Saltillo ran away with Miss Mannersley, as already recorded in these chronicles,* her relatives and friends found it much easier to forgive that ill-assorted union than to understand it.  For, after all, Enriquez was the scion of an old Spanish-Californian family, and in due time would have his share of his father’s three square leagues, whatever incongruity there was between his lively Latin extravagance and Miss Mannersley’s Puritan precision and intellectual superiority.  They had gone to Mexico; Mrs. Saltillo, as was known, having an interest in Aztec antiquities, and he being utterly submissive to her wishes.  For myself from my knowledge of Enriquez’s nature, I had grave doubts of his entire subjugation, although I knew the prevailing opinion was that Mrs. Saltillo’s superiority would speedily tame him.  Since his brief and characteristic note apprising me of his marriage, I had not heard from him.  It was, therefore, with some surprise, a good deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge of reproach that, two years after, I looked up from some proofs, in the sanctum of the “Daily Excelsior,” to recognize his handwriting on a note that was handed to me by a yellow Mexican boy.