Posey should be notified, and they would thereupon be married. Then
Dora would open a school somewhere, wherever she might chance to
find the indispensable children, while Posey, accompanied by his
newly-fledged father-in-law, if perchance that worthy individual
should be spared, would launch into the mines and conquer Fortune at
the point of the pick.

Time flew fast with the lovers after this, and they were quite
startled one day when Savage informed them that they were upon the
very borders of the promised land.

That evening, an hour before sunset, the train was halted for the
night at a point whence the travel-worn adventurers could look down
for the first time into the Sacramento Valley, and render thanks in
their various ways that the end of their tedious pilgrimage was almost
reached. As Dora Hanchett and Posey stood together upon a green knoll,
following with their eyes the winding trail that their feet were to
descend on the morrow, they descried, toiling slowly toward them, one
of those returning bands of unsuccessful and discouraged veterans--the
reflux of the great wave of immigration constantly pouring into the
golden valley--which they had frequently met in the course of their
long journey. As the cavalcade drew nearer, Dora's attention fixed
itself upon a curious figure that brought up the rear. Mounted upon a
loose aggregation of bones and ears that purported to be a mule, this
mysterious figure gradually approached, while Dora watched it as
if fascinated. On and on it came, and still she gazed, spell-bound.
Opposite her it paused. There was no longer any doubt: it was He.
Clad in the mangled remains of the original great-coat, the original
boot-tops yet towering in the region of his ears, and the upper half
of the original beaver crowning his well-developed brain, there He