Nevertheless, the two girls managed to bestow the heterogeneous collection with tasteful adaptation to their needs.  A crystal chandelier, which had once lent a fascinating illusion to the game of Monte, hung unlighted in the broad hall, where a few other bizarre and public articles were relegated.  A long red sofa or bench, which had done duty beside a billiard-table found a place here also.  Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful youths of Devil’s Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could see through the open door.  To others, it represented a recognized state of probation before their re-entree into civilization again.  “I reckon, if you don’t mind, miss,” said the spokesman of one party, “ez this is our first call, we’ll sorter hang out in the hall yer, until you’r used to us.”  On another occasion, one Whiskey Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted by him afterwards at the bar of the Tecumseh Saloon.

“You see, boys, I dropped in there the other night, when some of you fellers was doin’ the high-toned ‘thankee, marm’ business in the parlor.  I just came to anchor in the corner of the sofy in the hall, without lettin’ on to say that I was there, and took up a Webster’s dictionary that was on the table and laid it open—­keerless like, on my knees, ez if I was sorter consultin’ it—­and kinder dozed off there, listenin’ to you fellows gassin’ with the young ladies, and that yer Miss Christie just snakin’ music outer that pianner, and I reckon I fell asleep.  Anyhow, I was there nigh on to two hours.  It’s mighty soothin’, them fashionable calls; sorter knocks the old camp dust outer a fellow, and sets him up again.”

It would have been well if the new life of the Devil’s Ford had shown no other irregularity than the harmless eccentricities of its original locaters.  But the news of its sudden fortune, magnified by report, began presently to flood the settlement with another class of adventurers.  A tide of waifs, strays, and malcontents of old camps along the river began to set towards Devil’s Ford, in very much the same fashion as the debris, drift, and alluvium had been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks.  A few immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of travel by the fame of the new diggings, halted upon the slopes of Devil’s Spur and on the arid flats of the Ford, and disgorged their sallow freight of alkali-poisoned, prematurely-aged women and children and maimed and fever-stricken men.  Against this rude form of domesticity were opposed the chromo-tinted dresses and extravagant complexions of a few single unattended women—­happily seen more often at night behind gilded bars than in the garish light of day—­and an equal number of pale-faced, dark-moustached, well-dressed, and