pace which was habitual with Jenny even under less solemn
circumstances. The men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-
humoredly--strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, some a
little in the rear of the homely catafalque. But whether from the
narrowing of the road or some present sense of decorum, as the cart
passed on, the company fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and
otherwise assuming the external show of a formal procession. Jack
Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show
upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of sympathy and
appreciation,--not having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to
be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this time clothed in funereal
drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in
the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an
uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A
hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in
the ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened
to gain a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays,
spreading their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the
outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of
Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely
outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building
of the California miner, were all here with the dreariness of decay
superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough inclosure,
which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial
felicity, had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern.