"That's what I went to 'Frisco to look for," explained Tom, to the staring bystander, "but I couldn't find out a word about her."
"Don't wonder yer looked glum, then," said Cairo Jake; "but—but it's jest your luck!"
"Dominie here was going down to hurry you back," said Sunrise; "but—"
"But we'll give him a different job now, my dear," said Tom, completing the sentence.
And they did.
OLD TWITCHETT'S TREASURE.
Old Twitchett was in a very bad way. He must have been in a bad way, for Crockey, the extremely mean storekeeper at Bender, had given up his own bed to Twitchett, and when Crockey was moved with sympathy for any one, it was a sure sign that the object of his commiseration was going to soon stake a perpetual claim in a distant land, whose very streets, we are told, are of precious metal, and whose walls and gates are of rare and beautiful stones.
It was Twitchett's own fault, the boys said, with much sorrowful profanity. When they abandoned Black Peter Gulch to the Chinese, and located at Bender, Twitchett should have come along with the crowd, instead of staying there by himself, in such an unsociable way. Perhaps he preferred the society of rattlesnakes and horned toads to that of high-toned, civilized beings—there was no accounting for tastes—but then he should have remembered that all the rattlesnakes in the valley couldn't have raised a single dose of quinine between them, and that the most sociable horned toad in the world, and the most obliging one, couldn't fry a sick man's pork, or make his coffee.
But, then, Twitchett was queer, they agreed—he always was queer. He kept himself so much apart from the crowd, that until to-night, when the boys were excited about him, few had ever noticed that he was a white-haired, delicate young man, instead of a decrepit old one, and that the twitching of his lips was rather touching than comical.