The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder’s books before ten o’clock.  We claimed two hundred feet each—­six hundred feet in all—­the smallest and compactest organization in the district, and the easiest to manage.

No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.  Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake and think, dream, scheme.  The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace, the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany.  Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an electric battery had been applied to me.  We shot fragments of conversation back and forth at each other.  Once Higbie said: 

“When are you going home—­to the States?”

“To-morrow!”—­with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position.  “Well—­no—­but next month, at furthest.”

“We’ll go in the same steamer.”

“Agreed.”

A pause.

“Steamer of the 10th?”

“Yes.  No, the 1st.”

“All right.”

Another pause.

“Where are you going to live?” said Higbie.

“San Francisco.”

“That’s me!”

Pause.

“Too high—­too much climbing”—­from Higbie.

“What is?”

“I was thinking of Russian Hill—­building a house up there.”

“Too much climbing?  Shan’t you keep a carriage?”

“Of course.  I forgot that.”

Pause.

“Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?”

“I was thinking about that.  Three-story and an attic.”

“But what kind?”

“Well, I don’t hardly know.  Brick, I suppose.”

“Brick—­bosh.”

“Why?  What is your idea?”

“Brown stone front—­French plate glass—­billiard-room off the dining-room—­statuary and paintings—­shrubbery and two-acre grass plat —­greenhouse—­iron dog on the front stoop—­gray horses—­landau, and a coachman with a bug on his hat!”

“By George!”

A long pause.

“Cal., when are you going to Europe?”

“Well—­I hadn’t thought of that.  When are you?”

“In the Spring.”

“Going to be gone all summer?”

“All summer!  I shall remain there three years.”

“No—­but are you in earnest?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I will go along too.”

“Why of course you will.”

“What part of Europe shall you go to?”

“All parts.  France, England, Germany—­Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt—­all over—­everywhere.”

“I’m agreed.”

“All right.”

“Won’t it be a swell trip!”

“We’ll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one, anyway.”

Another long pause.