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Show A SAD STORY. 183 The man who thus spoke had a handsome head, well set on broad shoulders, a large, soul-full blue eye, and I wondered what trick Fortune had played on him to turn his hair as white as the snow-drift, for his face was yet young. "Have they told you of the two boys who had a camp way up yonder in Georgia Gulch ? That was a bitter winter. (I strung up my nerves to hear a heartrending story.) Many a poor miner would have sold his birth-right, like- Esau, for a mess of pottage, for pedigree don't count for much in this country; a good square meal goes farther. " We had the heaviest snow storm that winter that ever sifted down on these mountains, and the two boys in Georgia Gulch were snowed in for weeks and weeks, until their larder ran pretty low-it went plumb to the dogs, I might say, for they had decided that the poor, woe-begone ' yaller purp' must serve them for the next meal. " Neither of them could scrape up courage to slaughter the brute, for a miner's dog is dear to his heart; they talked about drawing straws, and finally concluded to chop off its tail, out of which they made soup; the famishing are never very choice. They gave the poor dog the bone, and being refreshed by their porridge, went in search of game. Success crowned their efforts, and they returned in the evening with enough to keep them from starving until the snow melted; but the mutilated pup was sorely "grieved over his sad narrative. "By the way, you must see Judge Silverthorn; he loves to talk of the old times. He came here in '59 and was Judge of the Miner's Court. He is a diminutive man, almost dried to a crackling, and has such a strange, weird look that you couldn't help wondering to what age or |
