dream of his boyhood. This version, giving as it did wide range to the
finer feelings of the heart, was quite popular; and as told by the Rev.
Mr. Gushington, on his return from his California tour, never failed to
satisfy an audience. The other was less simple, and, as I shall adopt it
here, deserves more elaboration.

It was after Mr. Thompson had given up searching for his son among the
living, and had taken to the examination of cemeteries, and a careful
inspection of the "cold hic jacets of the dead." At this time he was a
frequent visitor of "Lone Mountain,"--a dreary hill-top, bleak enough in
its original isolation, and bleaker for the white-faced marbles by which
San Francisco anchored her departed citizens, and kept them down in
a shifting sand that refused to cover them, and against a fierce and
persistent wind that strove to blow them utterly away. Against this wind
the old man opposed a will quite as persistent,--a grizzled, hard face,
and a tall, crape-bound hat drawn tightly over his eyes,--and so spent
days in reading the mortuary inscriptions audibly to himself. The
frequency of Scriptural quotation pleased him, and he was fond of
corroborating them by a pocket Bible. "That's from Psalms," he said,
one day, to an adjacent grave-digger. The man made no reply. Not at all
rebuffed, Mr. Thompson at once slid down into the open grave, with a
more practical inquiry, "Did you ever, in your profession, come across
Char-les Thompson?" "Thompson be d----d!" said the grave-digger,
with great directness. "Which, if he hadn't religion, I think he is,"
responded the old man, as he clambered out of the grave.

It was, perhaps, on this occasion that Mr. Thompson stayed later than
usual. As he turned his face toward the city, lights were beginning
to twinkle ahead, and a fierce wind, made visible by fog, drove him
forward, or, lying in wait, charged him angrily from the corners of