"I had another mirage thin," said Barney. "I wint up to town; called at Mrs. O'Kelly's; she mit me, smilin' like, and said: 'Walk in, Mr. Corrigan!' I said: 'If you please, Mrs. O'Kelly, can I see Miss Murphy?' There was a vicious twinkle in her eye, as she answered, pointin' to a nate house upon the hillside, as she spoke.
"'You will find her there, but her name is changed now. She was married on Thursday wake, to Mr. Mike Dougherty, the blacksmith. A foine man, and man of property, is Mr. Dougherty.'
"Talk about shtrong impressions! For a moment I felt as though I was fallin' down a shaft. I——but don't mention it."
Barney was still for a moment, and then said, in a voice almost husky: "As I came into town that day, all the great pines were noddin,' shmilin' and stretchin' out their mighty arms, as much as to say: 'We congratulate you, Mr. Corrigan.' As I turned away from Mrs. O'Kelly's, it samed to me that ivery one of thim had drawn in its branches and stood as the hoodlum does whin he pints his thumb to his nose and wriggles his fingers."
Just then the Potosi whistle rung out on the still night again, the others answered the call, and the Club, at the signal, retired.
CHAPTER IV.
As the pipes were lighted next evening, Carlin said to Barney: "Corrigan, does the ghost of your La Porte mirage haunt you as Wright's does him?"
"Not a bit of it," answered Corrigan sharply. "It hurt for awhile, I confess it, but a year and a half after Maggie was married, I passed her house one avenin' in the gloaming, and in a voice which I knew well, though all the swateness had been distilled out of it, this missage came out upon the air: 'Mike, if yees have got the brat to slape, yees had better lay him down and come out to your tay. I should loike to get these supper things put away sometime to-night.' Be dad, there was no mirage about that, no ravens about that, Wright; it was the charge of the rale Injun!'"
"Speaking of babies," said Miller nonchalantly, "do you know that about the most touching scene I ever witnessed was over a baby? It was in Downieville. California, way back in '51 or '2. You know at that time babies were not very numerous in the Sierras. There were plenty of men there who had not seen a good woman, or a baby, for two years or more. You may not believe it, but you shut the presence of women and children all out of men's lives, for months at a time, and they contract a disease, which I call 'heart hunger,' and because of that I suspect that more whiskey has been drunk in this country, and more killings have grown out of trifling quarrels, than through all other causes combined. Without the eyes of women, good women, that he respects, upon a man, in a little while the wild beast, which is latent in all men's hearts, begins to assert itself. Because of this, men who were born to be good and true, have, to kill the unrest within their souls, taken to drink; the drink has led naturally up to a quarrel; they have got away with their first fight; the fools around them have praised them for their 'sand'; there has been no look of sorrow and reproach in any honest woman's eyes to bring them back to their senses; and after such a beginning, look for them in a year, and, in nine cases out of ten, you will find that they are lost men.