A long room, lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on
the large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously
papered, and the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque
pattern; someone sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All
this we saw as we crowded together into the room after the driver and
expressman. "Hello! be you Miggles?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary
occupant.

The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully
toward it and turned the eye of his coach-lantern upon its face. It
was a man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes,
in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity
which I had sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from
Bill's face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that
luminous object without further recognition.

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

"Miggles! be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know," and Yuba Bill
shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.

To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable stranger
apparently collapsed, sinking into half his size and an
undistinguishable heap of clothing.

"Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and
hopelessly retiring from the contest.

The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious