'Now you Eastern galoots won't believe anything against the yellow devils,' he suddenly flamed out with an appearance of earnestness not altogether convincing,' but I tell you that Chink was the per-versest scoundrel outside San Francisco. The miser-able pig-tail Mongolian went to hewing away at the saplings all round the stems, like a worm o' the dust gnawing a radish. I pointed out his error as pa-tiently as I knew how, and showed him how to cut them on two sides, so as to make them fall right;but no sooner would I turn my back on him, like this'--and he turned it on me, amplifying the il-lustration by taking some more liquor--'than he was at it again. It was just this way: while I looked at him so'--regarding me rather unsteadily and with evident complexity of vision--' he was all right; but when I looked away, so'--taking a long pull at the bottle--' he defied me. Then I'd gaze at him reproachfully, so, and butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth.'
Doubtless Mr. Dunfer honestly intended the look that he fixed upon me to be merely reproachful, but it was singularly fit to arouse the gravest apprehen-sion in any unarmed person incurring it; and as I had lost all interest in his pointless and interminable nar-rative, I rose to go. Before I had fairly risen, he had again turned to the counter, and with a barely audible 'so,' had emptied the bottle at a gulp.
Heavens! what a yell! It was like a Titan in his last, strong agony. Jo. staggered back after emitting it, as a cannon recoils from its own thunder, and then dropped into his chair, as if he had been 'knocked in the head' like a beef--his eyes drawn sidewise toward the wall, with a stare of terror.
Looking in the same direction, I saw that the knot-hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye--a full, black eye, that glared into my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than the most devilish glitter. I think I must have covered my face with my hands to shut out the horrible illusion, if such it was, and Jo.'s little white man-of-all-work coming into the room broke the spell, and I walked out of the house with a sort of dazed fear that delirium tremens might be infectious. My horse was hitched at the watering-trough, and untying him Imounted and gave him his head, too much troubled in mind to note whither he took me.
I did not know what to think of all this, and like everyone who does not know what to think I thought a great deal, and to little purpose. The only reflection that seemed at all satisfactory was, that on the mor-row I should be some miles away, with a strong probability of never returning.
A sudden coolness brought me out of my abstrac-tion, and looking up I found myself entering the deep shadows of the ravine. The day was stifling; and this transition from the pitiless, visible heat of the parched fields to the cool gloom, heavy with pun-gency of cedars and vocal with twittering of the birds that had been driven to its leafy asylum, was exquisitely refreshing. I looked for my mystery, as usual, but not finding the ravine in a communica-tive mood, dismounted, led my sweating animal into the undergrowth, tied him securely to a tree and sat down upon a rock to meditate.
I began bravely by analysing my pet superstition about the place. Having resolved it into its constit-uent elements I arranged them in convenient troops and squadrons, and collecting all the forces of my logic bore down upon them from impregnable prem-ises with the thunder of irresistible conclusions and a great noise of chariots and general intellectual shouting. Then, when my big mental guns had over-turned all opposition, and were growling almost inaudibly away on the horizon of pure speculation, the routed enemy straggled in upon their rear, massed silently into a solid phalanx, and captured me, bag and baggage. An indefinable dread came upon me. I rose to shake it off, and began threading the narrow dell by an old, grass-grown cow-path that seemed to flow along the bottom, as a substitute for the brook that Nature had neglected to provide.
The trees among which the path straggled were ordinary, well-behaved plants, a trifle perverted as to trunk and eccentric as to bough, but with noth-ing unearthly in their general aspect. A few loose boulders, which had detached themselves from the sides of the depression to set up an independent existence at the bottom, had dammed up the path-way, here and there, but their stony repose had noth-ing in it of the stillness of death. There was a kind of death-chamber hush in the valley, it is true, and a mysterious whisper above: the wind was just finger-ing the tops of the trees--that was all.
I had not thought of connecting Jo. Dunfer's drunken narrative with what I now sought, and only when I came into a clear space and stumbled over the level trunks of some small trees did I have the revelation. This was the site of the abandoned 'shack.' The discovery was verified by noting that some of the rotting stumps were hacked all round, in a most unwoodmanlike way, while others were cut straight across, and the butt ends of the cor-responding trunks had the blunt wedge-form given by the axe of a master.
The opening among the trees was not more than thirty paces across. At one side was a little knoll--a natural hillock, bare of shrubbery but covered with wild grass, and on this, standing out of the grass, the headstone of a grave!
I do not remember that I felt anything like sur-prise at this discovery. I viewed that lonely grave with something of the feeling that Columbus must have had when he saw the hills and headlands of the new world. Before approaching it I leisurely com-pleted my survey of the surroundings. I was even guilty of the affectation of winding my watch at that unusual hour, and with needless care and delibera-tion. Then I approached my mystery.
