No wonder Mat should have grown confidential and talked about his
personal history--which was usually bad form in California, where
present fortune counted for everything and family history was regarded
as ancient history. He told her how in boyhood he came to California
from Virginia with his parents. That was back in the fifties, when
respectable women were so rare in the gold fields that their arrival was
hailed by the rough miners with a sort of religious fervor. One of Mat's
earliest recollections was a scene with emigrant wagon and camp-fire in
the background, and in the foreground his mother, clasping him by the
hand and greeting a score of bearded men, who, with hats off, were
paying her homage.
He could remember, too, how they had come over the mountains through
Emigrant Gap, passing the graves of the Donner party. The tragedy of the
snow-bound emigrants had made a deep impression upon his imagination. He
spoke of it to Mamie, and she rather saucily inquired what he would do
with her if they, too, were caught in a severe snowstorm.
"In the first place," said Mat, "I wouldn't let you start out in a
snowstorm.
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