the end of the second month, he actually had money ahead, and being of a commercial turn of mind, tried his hand at "busting" a faro bank. He did not quite succeed in the operation—he never quite made a success of anything he undertook—but he won eleven hundred and eighty dollars nevertheless.
There was a gushing young lady, who tended bar in a dance-house in Placerville, who had made his acquaintance before he made this "ten-strike," and now she suddenly discovered that he was a really good-hearted fellow, and not bad-looking. She suggested that it would be a good thing for them to go into partnership, matrimonial and financial, and start a hotel at Coon Hollow, a new and promising camp not far from Placerville—which was then more familiarly known as "Hangtown." The financial partnership was to be immediate and absolute; the matrimonial one, conditional and prospective. The arrangement, though it might have pleased him better if slightly modified, on the whole met with his approval; they rented the hotel, and she started down to Sacramento to purchase the necessary outfit for the bar before starting in at "keeping tavern." She took his money with her, and—did not return. Bill borrowed fifty dollars of a sympathizing friend, followed her down to Sacramento, and there learned that she had gone "to the Bay" in company with a big red-headed fellow, known as "Sandy Bob," who came out with her from New York, and who, if not her husband, should have been. "No use following any further after her!"
Bill knocked around Sacramento until his borrowed
