All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had a abundance of money.  All’s well that ends well.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness.  I had the field all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in the Pacific market.  They are not so rare, now, I suppose.  I took an old personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it.  Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed within two miles of the town.  The daring act was committed just at dawn, by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a general dismount.  Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their watches and every cent they had.  Then they took gunpowder and blew up the express specie boxes and got their contents.  The leader of the robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner and his intrepidity was in everybody’s mouth when we arrived.

The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate “divide” and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there.  The lecture done, I stopped to talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven.  The “divide” was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty midnight murders and a hundred robberies.  As we climbed up and stepped out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our backs, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal.  A sharp wind swept the place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through.

“I tell you I don’t like this place at night,” said Mike the agent.

“Well, don’t speak so loud,” I said.  “You needn’t remind anybody that we are here.”

Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia—­a man, evidently.  He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again.  Then I saw that he had a mask on and was holding something in my face—­I heard a click-click and recognized a revolver in dim outline.  I pushed the barrel aside with my hand and said: 

“Don’t!”

He ejaculated sharply: 

“Your watch!  Your money!”

I said: 

“You can have them with pleasure—­but take the pistol away from my face, please.  It makes me shiver.”

“No remarks!  Hand out your money!”

“Certainly—­I—­”

“Put up your hands!  Don’t you go for a weapon!  Put ’em up!  Higher!”

I held them above my head.

A pause.  Then: 

“Are you going to hand out your money or not?”

I dropped my hands to my pockets and said: 

Certainly!  I—­”

“Put up your hands!  Do you want your head blown off?  Higher!”