such a conclusion; the newer men of Rough-and-Ready were in the
majority, and wielded a more than equal influence of wealth and
outside enterprise. "Frisco," as a Downeyite bitterly remarked,
"already owned half the town." The old friends that rallied around
Daddy and Mammy were, like most loyal friends in adversity, in bad
case themselves, and were beginning to look and act, it was
observed, not unlike their old favorites.

At this juncture Mammy died.

The sudden blow for a few days seemed to reunite dissevered Rough-
and-Ready. Both factions hastened to the bereaved Daddy with
condolements, and offers of aid and assistance. But the old man
received them sternly. A change had come over the weak and
yielding octogenarian. Those who expected to find him maudlin,
helpless, disconsolate, shrank from the cold, hard eyes and
truculent voice that bade them "begone," and "leave him with his
dead." Even his own friends failed to make him respond to their
sympathy, and were fain to content themselves with his cold
intimation that both the wishes of his dead wife and his own
instincts were against any display, or the reception of any favor
from the camp that might tend to keep up the divisions they had
innocently created. The refusal of Daddy to accept any service
offered was so unlike him as to have but one dreadful meaning! The
sudden shock had turned his brain! Yet so impressed were they with
his resolution that they permitted him to perform the last sad
offices himself, and only a select few of his nearer neighbors
assisted him in carrying the plain deal coffin from his lonely
cabin in the woods to the still lonelier cemetery on the hill-top.