"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
This was the song of the fat little Judge, one fine morning, as he wandered down towards the Howling Wilderness, sniffing the glorious balm, the very breath of the forest, and glancing ever and anon over his shoulder towards the cabin of Captain Tommy.
How new, and fresh and sweet, and fragrant the odors of the mighty, mossy woods that climbed and climbed and ever climbed as if to mount the summits, and push their tasselled tops against the indolent summer clouds that hovered like great white-winged birds above the peaks of snow. So new and fresh it seemed that summer morning, that the little Judge stopped on the hill-side and stood there to inhale its sweetness.
"How fresh and fine is this new world of Californy. It is only finished to-day. I can smell the varnish on it."
The Judge took out his great cotton bandanna, took off his hat, and polished his bald head till it shone in the sun like a mirror.
Then the little man stuffed his big handkerchief back in his bosom, and went on down the trail, humming softly to himself:
"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
A man in great gum boots, duck breeches, a hat like a tent, with a gold pan under his arm and a pipe sticking out through a mask of matted beard, met the little man in the trail, heard his song as he passed, and looking back over his shoulder, said to himself: "The derned bald-headed old rooster! What's he a-singin' hymns fur now?"
The little Judge could not sit down in the saloon. He felt that something was the matter, and he thought that he was lonesome. The little brown mice upstairs could be heard all day now, for the miners were at work up to their thighs in the water, delving away there in their great gum boots as if they were in a sort of diving-bell.
So the Judge went away from the Howling Wilderness. There was no man to be found who had time to talk, and so he sought a woman.