word remarkable. Commerce and finance were now established upon a basis more secure and substantial than any one would have ever dreamed of fourteen years before. The foundation which was then laid was now a magnificent structure, of unquestionably solid permanence; and the name of California now inspired confidence and respect throughout the country, and was no longer associated with wild-cat speculation and bombastic brag.
A majority of the mining-posts which at that time were rude, disorganized camps were now thrifty and respectable towns; and among these was Red Mountain. It still bore its old name, but it wore a brisk, wholesome, and business-like air. There were many new faces at Red Mountain, though there was still a goodly sprinkling of the "old-timers." In fact, the most of those who had gazed upon Mark Stanley, with wondering eyes, the night when Droopy first brought him into camp, still revelled in the inspiring healthfulness of the Red Mountain climate.
"Nobody never dies on Red Mounting," said a brawny "forty-niner" to a newly-arrived and nervous-looking "tenderfoot," whose clothes fitted him so tightly that he looked as if he had been made for them, and not they for him. "No, sir; nobody never dies here. Why, we had ter kill a man ter start a graveyard."
Dubb was now the leading man of that region. His mine, the nest-egg of which had been Mark Stanley's abandoned claim, had been a thorough success, and its resources were still a long way from exhaustion. He made Tom Morris his business manager, and Droopy his superintendent, about two years after his arrival at Red Mountain, or when he had found it necessary to go into mining on an extensive scale. The twelve years which followed, which brings matters up to the period under present discussion, made Dubb one of the richest men in the West; and, for all his prosperity, he was still, as of old, unassuming, unconcerned, and quiet.
Political and social honors were offered him, but he always kept in the background. The fourteen years which had passed since prosperity first smiled on him changed Dubb in but one thing: he gradually grew out of the twisted grammar of the Maine woods, and picked up, a bit at a time, the quite as picturesque vernacular of the mining-camps in its stead. None of his other habits underwent evolution. He still trimmed his beard with shears, and he still wore coarse, ill-fitting clothes.
Now that over him were thrown the spell and glamour of great riches, people seemed to see him with more kindly eyes than formerly, and his peculiar demeanor, which used to afford so much merriment was now spoken of as fitting and becoming dignity, Others went so far as to dilate upon his fine personal appearance,—the same ones, too, who had found him so comical and grotesque when he was poor.
There were several barbers at Red Mountain, and their influence was plainly perceptible in the closely-cropped hair and neatly-trimmed beard of Tom Morris; but the only effect of these tonsorial gentlemen upon Droopy was in the suspicious odor of perfumed bear's-grease which was exhaled from his hair and beard, and in the hitter's unmiti-
