The great San Francisco fire of '55.

City swept clean from the face of the earth, and built up again, finer than before, inside of a month.

I tell you, fellows, those Californians are rustlers! Why, I met a man out in 'Frisco last month whom I knew, two years ago, as a raftsman on this very river at twenty a month and found.

To-day he is worth a cool million of dollars, and if you want to know how he made it, I'll let you into the secret." And so the young stranger rattled on with story and joke, never pausing to study the panoramic scenes as they moved slowly along, but giving each the first title that suggested itself, and working in descriptions to fit the titles.

He kept it up for more than an hour; and when Sabella, who was watching him from the side scenes with admiring wonder, called out softly that the picture he was then describing was the last, he gracefully dismissed as delighted an audience as ever attended a river show, and disappeared with them.
[Illustration: Billy Brackett is a friend in need.] Billy Brackett had come up the Illinois side of the river by rail and stage, and had been ferried across to Mandrake just in time to be attracted by the incipient riot aboard the _Whatnot_.