he had sung the song in earnest, in an Asiatic port, swinging and
thrilling round the capstan-circle with twenty others. And at San
Francisco he turned his back upon his ship and upon the sea, and went to
behold with his own eyes the banks of the Sacramento.

He beheld the gold, too, for he found employment at the Yellow Dream
mine, and proved of utmost usefulness in rigging the great ore-cables
across the river and two hundred feet above its surface.

After that he took charge of the cables and kept them in repair, and
ran them and loved them, and became himself an indispensable fixture of
the Yellow Dream mine. Then he loved pretty Margaret Kelly; but she had
left him and Young Jerry, the latter barely toddling, to take up her
last long sleep in the little graveyard among the great sober pines.

Old Jerry never went back to the sea. He remained by his cables, and
lavished upon them and Young Jerry all the love of his nature. When evil
days came to the Yellow Dream, he still remained in the employ of the
company as watchman over the all but abandoned property.

But this morning he was not visible. Young Jerry only was to be seen,
sitting on the cabin step and singing the ancient chantey. He had cooked
and eaten his breakfast all by himself, and had just come out to take a
look at the world. Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum round
which the endless cable worked. By the drum, snug and fast, was the
ore-car. Following with his eyes the dizzy flight of the cables to the
farther bank, he could see the other drum and the other car.

The contrivance was worked by gravity, the loaded car crossing the river
by virtue of its own weight, and at the same time dragging the empty car