amounting to nearly $500,000 in gold, drafts, and jewelry, as no trace
of the property was found. Yesterday our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr.
Cass Beard, long and favorably known in this county, succeeded in
exhuming the treasure in a copse of hazel near the Red Chief
turnpike,--adjacent to the spot where an unknown body was lately
discovered. This body is now strongly suspected to be that of one Henry
Cass, a disreputable character, who has since been ascertained to have
been one of the road agents who escaped. The matter is now under legal
investigation. The successful result of the search is due to a
systematic plan evolved from the genius of Mr. Beard, who has devoted
over a year to this labor. It was first suggested to him by the finding
of a ring, now definitely identified as part of the treasure which was
supposed to have been dropped from Wells, Fargo & Co.'s boxes by the
robbers in their midnight flight through Blazing Star.
In the same journal appeared the no less important intelligence, which
explains, while it completes this veracious chronicle:--
"It is rumored that a marriage is shortly to take place between the
hero of the late treasure discovery and a young lady of Red Chief,
whose devoted aid and assistance to this important work is well known
to this community."
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS.
CHAPTER I.
The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of
sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in
unfathomable depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the
enormous trunks of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast
columns, and the dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the
echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day.
But even this soon passed. Light and color fled upwards. The dark,
interlaced tree-tops, that had all day made an impenetrable shade,
broke into fire here and there; their lost spires glittered, faded, and
went utterly out. A weird twilight that did not come from an outer
world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled and possessed
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