That is a circumstance which, without
actual irreverence, one may wish had been ordered
otherwise.
THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT 'DEADMAN'S'
A Story that is Untrue
IT was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the
heart of a diamond. Clear nights have a trick of be-
ing keen. In darkness you may be cold and not
know it; when you see, you suffer. This night was
bright enough to bite like a serpent. The moon was
moving mysteriously along behind the giant pines
crowning the South Mountain, striking a cold
sparkle from the crusted snow, and bringing out
against the black west and ghostly outlines of the
Coast Range, beyond which lay the invisible Pa-
cific. The snow had piled itself, in the open spaces
along the bottom of the gulch, into long ridges that
seemed to heave, and into hills that appeared to
toss and scatter spray. The spray was sunlight, twice
reflected: dashed once from the moon, once from the
snow.
In this snow many of the shanties of the aban-
doned mining camp were obliterated (a sailor might
have said they had gone down), and at irregular in-
tervals it had overtopped the tall trestles which had
once supported a river called a flume; for, of course,
'flume' is flumen. Among the advantages of which
the mountains cannot deprive the gold-hunter is the
privilege of speaking Latin. He says of his dead
neighbour, 'He has gone up the flume.' This is not
a bad way to say, 'His life has returned to the
Fountain of Life.
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