The men had seen their share ups and downs -- having been starved, snowed upon, half drowned, and shot at by road-agents and horse-thieves. Now the money had run out, and in the morning they would shake hands all round and call everything square, and go on their separate ways. But some of them had seen a strange light down in the hollow, that night -- and it turned out to be not heat lightning, nor swamp fire . . . but real fire: a forest fire -- And there was a house down there, in the hollow, where they had seen a woman peering out a little window . . .

Author Biography

Francis Bret Harte (1836 - 1902) was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted and admired.