from a meaner craving for excitement, the assemblage was inflexible; and
Scott was dragged, pushed, and pulled upon the platform.

As his frowsy head and unkempt beard appeared above the railing, it was
evident that he was drunk. But it was also evident, before he opened his
lips, that the orator of Sandy Bar--the one man who could touch their
vagabond sympathies (perhaps because he was not above appealing to
them)--stood before them. A consciousness of this power lent a certain
dignity to his figure, and I am not sure but that his very physical
condition impressed them as a kind of regal unbending and large
condescension. Howbeit, when this unexpected Hector arose from the
ditch, York's myrmidons trembled.

"There's naught, gentlemen," said Scott, leaning forward on the
railing,--"there's naught as that man hez said as isn't true. I was run
outer Cairo; I did belong to the Regulators; I did desert from the army;
I did leave a wife in Kansas. But thar's one thing he didn't charge me
with, and, maybe, he's forgotten. For three years, gentlemen, I was
that man's pardner!--" Whether he intended to say more, I cannot tell;
a burst of applause artistically rounded and enforced the climax, and
virtually elected the speaker. That fall he went to Sacramento, York
went abroad; and for the first time in many years, distance and a new
atmosphere isolated the old antagonists.


With little of change in the green wood, gray rock, and yellow river,
but with much shifting of human landmarks, and new faces in its
habitations, three years passed over Sandy Bar. The two men, once so
identified with its character, seemed to have been quite forgotten.
"You will never return to Sandy Bar," said Miss Folinsbee, the "Lily of