UNDER THE REDWOODS




JIMMY'S BIG BROTHER FROM CALIFORNIA


As night crept up from the valley that stormy afternoon, Sawyer's
Ledge was at first quite blotted out by wind and rain, but presently
reappeared in little nebulous star-like points along the mountain side,
as the straggling cabins of the settlement were one by one lit up by
the miners returning from tunnel and claim. These stars were of varying
brilliancy that evening, two notably so--one that eventually resolved
itself into a many-candled illumination of a cabin of evident festivity;
the other into a glimmering taper in the window of a silent one.
They might have represented the extreme mutations of fortune in the
settlement that night: the celebration of a strike by Robert Falloner, a
lucky miner; and the sick-bed of Dick Lasham, an unlucky one.

The latter was, however, not quite alone. He was ministered to by Daddy
Folsom, a weak but emotional and aggressively hopeful neighbor, who was
sitting beside the wooden bunk whereon the invalid lay. Yet there
was something perfunctory in his attitude: his eyes were continually
straying to the window, whence the illuminated Falloner festivities