As his frowsy head and unkempt beard appeared above the railing, it was evident that he was drunk.  But it was also evident, before he opened his lips, that the orator of Sandy Bar—­the one man who could touch their vagabond sympathies (perhaps because he was not above appealing to them)—­stood before them.  A consciousness of this power lent a certain dignity to his figure, and I am not sure but that his very physical condition impressed them as a kind of regal unbending and large condescension.  Howbeit, when this unexpected Hector arose from the ditch, York’s myrmidons trembled.

“There’s naught, gentlemen,” said Scott, leaning forward on the railing,—­“there’s naught as that man hez said as isn’t true.  I was run outer Cairo; I did belong to the Regulators; I did desert from the army; I did leave a wife in Kansas.  But thar’s one thing he didn’t charge me with, and, maybe, he’s forgotten.  For three years, gentlemen, I was that man’s pardner!—­” Whether he intended to say more, I cannot tell; a burst of applause artistically rounded and enforced the climax, and virtually elected the speaker.  That fall he went to Sacramento, York went abroad; and for the first time in many years, distance and a new atmosphere isolated the old antagonists.

With little of change in the green wood, gray rock, and yellow river, but with much shifting of human landmarks, and new faces in its habitations, three years passed over Sandy Bar.  The two men, once so identified with its character, seemed to have been quite forgotten.  “You will never return to Sandy Bar,” said Miss Folinsbee, the “Lily of Poverty Flat,” on meeting York in Paris, “for Sandy Bar is no more.  They call it Riverside now; and the new town is built higher up on the river-bank.  By the by, ‘Jo’ says that Scott has won his suit about the ‘Amity Claim,’ and that he lives in the old cabin, and is drunk half his time.  O, I beg your pardon,” added the lively lady, as a flush crossed York’s sallow cheek; “but, bless me, I really thought that old grudge was made up.  I’m sure it ought to be.”

It was three months after this conversation, and a pleasant summer evening, that the Poverty Flat coach drew up before the veranda of the Union Hotel at Sandy Bar.  Among its passengers was one, apparently a stranger, in the local distinction of well-fitting clothes and closely shaven face, who demanded a private room and retired early to rest.  But before sunrise next morning he arose, and, drawing some clothes from his carpet-bag, proceeded to array himself in a pair of white duck trousers, a white duck overshirt, and straw hat.  When his toilet was completed, he tied a red bandanna handkerchief in a loop and threw it loosely over his shoulders.  The transformation was complete.  As he crept softly down the stairs and stepped into the road, no one would have detected in him the elegant stranger of the previous night, and but few have recognized the face and figure of Henry York of Sandy Bar.