I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my _nom de guerre._ I very soon had an opportunity.

I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall.

It was snowing at the time.

A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me.

When he heard my _nom de guerre_ he looked more dejected than before.