Taking a heavy stone from the road, he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure.
We followed.

Nobody was to be seen.

In the gathering darkness all that we could distinguish was that we were in a garden--from the rosebushes that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves--and before a long, rambling wooden building.
"Do you know this Miggles ?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.
"No, nor, don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.
"But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge as he thought of the barred gate.
"Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced?
I'm going in," and he pushed open the door of the building.
A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; somebody sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace.

All this we saw as we crowded together into the room, after the driver and expressman.
"Hello, be you Miggles ?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.
The figure neither spoke nor stirred.

Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face.