prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable. And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's your business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead1 what did he die of?" " "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he did na exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wad na come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi' the auld dowg, his like was na atween this and Thornhill, but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace, and be civil? - VIII. THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT1 (1869) By Bret Harte (1836-1902) [Setting. The group tragedy enacted in this story took place between November 23 and December 7, 1850, on the road from Poker Flat to Sandy Bar, in Sierra County, California. The time and place are those that Bret Harte has made peculiarly his own. The austerity and wildness of the scenery seem somehow to favor the intimate revelation of character that the story displays. There is no intervention of cities, crops, fashions, or conventions between the different members of the character group or between the group as a whole and the reader. All is bare like a white mountain peak. Notice also how the background of a common peril draws the characters together and brings out at last the best in each. Plot. The story sets forth and interprets a dramatic situation. The plot is staged so as to answer the question, "Do not the people whom society regards as outcasts have yet some redeeming virtue?" Notice especially how a sense of common fellowship is developed in these outcasts. First, they are subjected to a common humiliation in being driven from Poker Flat by persons whom the outcasts consider no whit better than themselves. Next, they are exposed to a common danger, a danger that leads the stronger to care instinctively for the weaker, and the weaker to recognize that it is nobler to give than to receive. At last, in the unexpected entrance of the innocent Tom Simson and the guileless Piney Woods, the outcasts find 1 Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers of Bret Harte's Works. a common challenge to the native goodness that had long lain dormant within them. Innocence and guilelessness may be laughed at, as they are here, but their appeal is often stronger than the appeal of disciplined virtue or of self-conscious superiority. When Bret Harte was charged with confusing the boundary lines of vice and virtue he replied that his plots "conformed to the rules laid down by a Great Poet who created the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan." Characters. Oakhurst, who is always called "Mr." Oakhurst, is of course the dominant character. The story begins with him and ends with him. He is "the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat," strong while there was any. thing to be done, weak even to suicide when he had only to wait for the inevitable end. He was a brave, desperate, solitary man, whose thought and speech and action, however, were always those of the professional gambler. Bret Harte, who has put him into several stories, says of him in another place: "Go where he would and with whom, he was always a notable man in ten thousand." The admiration that we yield to such a man, though it is only a qualified admiration, is doubtless the admiration of power which, we cannot help thinking, might be used beneficently if it could only be harnessed to a noble cause. But if Oakhurst is the dominant character, Piney Woods is, I think, the central character. She is central in this story just as little Aglaia is central in Tennyson's "Princess," or Eppie in George Eliot's "Silas Marner," or the baby offspring of Cherokee Sal in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Bret Harte had just written the last-named story when he began the composition of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." The same great theme, the radiating and redeeming power of innocence and purity, was carried over from the first story to the second. The ministry of the baby and the ministry of the fifteen-year-old bride is the same in both. Like the Great Stone Face in Hawthorne's story or like little Pippa in Browning's poem, they awaken the better nature of those about them. They restore hopes that had become but memories and memories that had almost ceased to be hopes.] As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous. Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was another question. "I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected; "likely it's me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture. In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment. Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp—an entire stranger — carry away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice. Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer. A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as "The Duchess"; another, who had won the title of " Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives. As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she |