252 MULE-HUNTING EXPEDITION. 
about ten, and put up at the ‘What Cheer House,’ 
bespoke my bed, and ordered breakfast. The 
keen morning-air and a thirty-mile ride had 
made me perfectly ravenous, and I waged alarm- 
ing havoc on the ham and eggs, fixings, and 
corn-dodgers, that, I must say, were admirable. 
The tea was not a success, being a remarkably 
mild infusion, very hot, and sweetened with 
brown sugar; but it washed down the solids, and 
the finest congou could not have done more. 
Thus recuperated, I started off to call on 
Judge , to whom I had a letter of introduc- 
tion from my agents in San Francisco. It did not 
take long to find the Judge’s quarters, the lanes, 
streets, and alleys being distinctions without 
any material differences. The mansion in which 
his judgeship ‘ roomed.’ was a small shanty, with 
a porch or verandah round it, to keep off the sun 
when it happened to be hot, and the wet when it 
rained. I knocked with my knuckles—no reply ; 
tried again—still silence; resorted to the handle 
of my hunting-knife, anything but mildly—that 
did it. 
‘T raither calkilate, stranger, you’d better jist 
open that door; J ain’t agwine to, you bet your 
boots.’ 
I opened it, and walked in. There sat Judge 
