Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/51

Rh years behind the mode, but well brushed and carefully mended, was buttoned up closely, and still sat upon his thin but sinewy figure with something of its old-time elegance. In one hand he carried a little black lacquer cane.

Sitting down opposite John Gault, where the light of the long window fell full upon his face, he had all the assurance of manner of a man whose bonanza has not become a memory and a dream.

"I was going by, and I thought I 'd drop in and pass the time of day," he said. "Things are n't as lively with me just now as they have been. It 's an off season."

"It 's that with most of us," said the other, regarding him intently and wondering what he had come for.

"All in the same coffin, are we?" said the colonel, airily. "I 'm generally on the full jump down here of a morning; but lately—"

He shrugged his shoulders and flung out his hands with a gesture of hopeless acquiescence in unmerited bad luck.

"You 're fortunate," said Gault, "to have something to be on the full jump about. We find things pretty slow."

"Oh, of course, in comparison with the past," assented the old man. "Slow? Slow is not the word. Dead, my dear friend! San Francisco is a dead city—dead as Pompeii."