view-there is just such another to this day within half a mile of the old abbey town. The sun shone from out the clear blue sky, the water sparkled beneath its rays, and the trees looked greener, and the flowers more gay, beneath his cheering influence. The water rippled on, with a pleasant sound; the trees rustled in the light wind that murmured among their leaves; the birds sang upon the boughs; and the lark carolled on high her welcome to the morning. Yes, it was morning -the bright, balmy morning of summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant crept forth to her daily toil; the butterfly fluttered and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but happy existence. Man walked forth elated with the scene; and all was brightness and splendour. "You a miserable man!" said the king of the goblins, in a more contemptuous tone than before. And again the king of the goblins gave his leg a flourish; again it descended on the shoulders of the sexton; and again the attendant goblins imitated the example of their chief. Many a time the cloud went and came, and many a lesson it taught to Gabriel Grub, who, although his shoulders smarted with pain from the frequent application of the goblins' feet, looked on with an interest that nothing could diminish. He saw that men who worked hard, and earned their scanty bread with lives of labour, were cheerful and happy; and that to the most ignorant the sweet face of nature was a never-failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw those who had been delicately nurtured, and tenderly brought up, cheerful under privations, and superior to suffering that would have crushed many of a rougher grain, because they bore within their own bosoms the materials of happiness, contentment, and peace. He saw that men like himself, who snarled at the cheerfulness of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair surface of the earth; and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all. No sooner had he formed it than the cloud which had closed over the last picture seemed to settle on his senses, and lull him to repose. One by one the goblins faded from his sight; and as the last one disappeared, he sank to sleep. The day had broken when Gabriel Grub awoke, and found himself lying at full length on the flat gravestone in the churchyard, with the wicker bottle lying empty by his side, and his coat, spade, and lantern, all well whitened by the last night's frost, scattered on the ground. The stone on which he had first seen the goblin seated stood bolt upright before him, and the grave at which he had worked the night before was not far off. At first, he began to doubt the reality of his adventures; but the acute pain in his shoulders, when he attempted to rise, assured him that the kicking of the goblins was certainly not ideal. He was staggered again by observing no traces of footsteps in the snow on which the goblins had played at leapfrog with the gravestones; but he speedily accounted for this circumstance when he remembered that, being spirits, they would leave no visible impression behind them. So Gabriel Grub got on his feet as well as he could for the pain in his back, and brushing the frost off his coat, put it on, and turned his face towards the town. But he was an altered man, and he could not bear the thought of returning to a place where his repentance would be scoffed at, and his reformation disbelieved. He hesitated for a few moments, and then turned away to wander where he might, and seek his bread elsewhere. The lantern, the spade, and the wicker bottle were found that day in the churchyard. There were a great many speculations about the sexton's fate at first, but it was speedily determined that he had been carried away by the goblins; and there were not wanting some very credible witnesses who had distinctly seen him whisked through the air on the back of a chestnut horse, blind of one eye, with the hind-quarters of a lion and the tail of a bear. Unfortunately, these stories were somewhat disturbed by the unlooked-for reappearance of Gabriel Grub himself, some ten years afterwards, a ragged, contented, rheumatic old man. He told his story to the clergyman, and also to the mayor; and in course of time it began to be received as a matter of history, in which form it has continued down to this very day. The believers in the weathercock tale, having misplaced their confidence once, were not easily prevailed upon to part with it again, so they looked as wise as they could, shrugged their shoulders, touched their foreheads, and murmured something about Gabriel Grub having drunk all the Hollands, and then fallen asleep on the flat tombstone; and they affected to explain what he supposed he had witnessed in the goblins' cavern, by saying that he had seen the world, and grown wiser. But this opinion, which was by no means a popular one at any time, gradually died off; and, be the matter how it may, as Gabriel Grub was afflicted with rheumatism to the end of his days, this story has at least one moral, if it teach no better one-and that is, that if a man turn sulky and drink by himself at Christmas time, he may make up his mind to be not a bit the better for it let the spirits be never so good, or let them be even as many degrees beyond proof as those which Gabriel Grub saw in the goblins' cavern. "THE LUCK" OF ROARING CAMP. IN [By BRET HARTE.] N the midst of an | thing towards the orphan will find a hat handy." excited discussion, The first man entered with his hat on; he unan exclamation came covered, however, as he looked about him, and so from those nearest unconsciously set an example to the next. In the door, and the such communities good and bad actions are catchcamp stopped to ing. As the procession filed in, comments were listen. Above the audible-criticisms addressed, perhaps, rather to swaying and moan- Stumpy, in the character of showman-"Is that ing of the pines, the him?"" Mighty small specimen;" "Hasn't more'n swift rush of the got the colour;" "Ain't bigger nor a pistol." The river, and the crack- contributions were as characteristic: a silver ling of the fire, rose tobacco-box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver a sharp, querulous mounted; a gold specimen; a very beautifully cry-a cry unlike embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst anything heard be- the gambler); a diamond breast-pin; a diamond fore in the camp. ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from The pines stopped the giver that he " saw that pin and went two moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to diamonds better"): a slung shot; a Bible (concrackle. It seemed as if nature had stopped to tributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver listen, too. teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for £5; and about 200 dollars in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weatherbeaten cheek. "The little cuss!" he said, as he extricated his finger, with, perhaps, more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, "the little cuss!" The camp rose to its feet as one man. It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour, she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, for ever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful. When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candlebox was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and ex officio complacency-"Gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to contribute any It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of the new-comer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the weakness of the nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river, and whistled reflectively. Then he walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large red-wood tree he paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy. "How goes it?" said Kentuck, looking past Stumpy towards the candle-box. "All serene," replied Stumpy. "Anything up?" "Nothing." There was a pause-an embarrassing one-Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. "Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp as in other places. The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed on to accept Roaring Camp as her home. Stumpy advanced to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy. "Rastled with it-the little cuss!" he said, and retired. The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprung up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to Red Dog, a distance of forty miles-where female attendance could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and unanimous nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny "-the mammal before alluded to-could manage to rear the child. There was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got-lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills-never mind the cost!" Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills-that air pungent with balsamic odour, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating-he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him. Don't you," he would add, apostrophising the helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us." By the time he was a month old, the necessity of giving him a name became apparent. He had generally been known as the "Kid," "Stumpy's boy," the "Cayotte" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "the little cuss." But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful. "Luck" was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience. hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers, or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts. Vocal music, however, was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquillising quality; and one song, sung by “Mano'-War Jack," an English sailor from Her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding the Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack, or the length of his song-it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end-the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees, in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, "is 'evingly." It reminded him of Greenwich. And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to "Tommy Luck"-or "The Luck" as he was more frequently called-first showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and white- On the long summer days the Luck was usually washed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and carried to the Gulch, from whence the golden store papered. The rosewood cradle-packed eighty of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket miles by mule-had, in Stumpy's way of putting spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the it, "sorter killed the rest of the furniture." So the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity. there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower The men who were in the habit of lounging in at with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and Stumpy's to see "how the Luck got on," seemed generally some one would bring him a cluster of to appreciate the change, and, in self-defence, the wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted blosrival establishment of "Tuttle's Grocery" bestirred soms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly itself, and imported a carpet and mirrors. The awakened to the fact that there were beauty and reflections of the latter on the appearance of significance in these trifles, which they had so long Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of of personal cleanliness. Again, Stumpy imposed glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, bethe honour and privilege of holding the Luck. came beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthIt was a cruel mortification to Kentuck-who, in ened, and were invariably put aside for the the carelessness of a large nature, and the habits Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as sloughed off through decay-to be debarred this never child out of fairy-land had before, it is to privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared such was the subtle influence of innovation, that to be securely happy, albeit there was an infantine he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon gravity about him, a contemplative light in his in a clean shirt, and face still shining from his round grey eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy. ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary He was always tractable and quiet, and it is laws neglected. "Tommy," who was supposed to recorded that once, having crept beyond his spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt "corral " a hedge of tassellated pine boughs, to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The which surrounded his bed-he dropped over the shouting and yelling which had gained the camp bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained its infelicitous title were not permitted within | with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition. "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement, "and if he wasn't a talking to a jay-bird as was sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable as was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly pre-empted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman their only connecting link with the surrounding world--sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say, "They've anything you please." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine-boughs or lying lazily on his back, blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip be tween the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gums; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment. Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush times "-and the Luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges, and looked a street up there in 'Roaring,' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby." With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement. It was proposed to build an hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of the Luck-who might, perhaps, profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this. concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely sceptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for |