ull share of privation and toil; and
adventurers, ready to go anywhere for the sake of adventure itself. In
truth, it was a motley assemblage, which to the boys was like a
continually shifting panorama of hope, ambition, honesty, dishonor,
pluck, and human enterprise and daring, that was ever present
throughout the thousand miles of salt water that stretches from Seattle
to Juneau.

Juneau, the metropolis of Alaska, was founded in 1880, and named in
honor of Joseph Juneau, the discoverer of gold on Douglas Island, two
miles distant. There is located the Treadwell quartz-mill, the largest
in the world. The city nestles at the base of a precipitous mountain,
thirty-three hundred feet high, has several thousand inhabitants, with
its wooden houses regularly laid out, good wharves, water works,
electric lights, banks, hotels, newspapers, schools, and churches.

"Here's where we get our outfit," said Jeff, as they hurried over the
plank to the landing. "But where can Tim be?"

He paused abruptly as soon as he was clear of the crowd, and looked
around for the one who was the cause of his coming to this
out-of-the-way corner of the world. He was still gazing when a man,
dressed much the same as himself, but short, stockily built, and with
the reddest hair and whiskers the boys had ever seen, his round face
aglow with pleasure stepped hastily forward from the group of
spectators and extended his hand.

"Ah, Jiff, it does me good to see your handsome silf; and how have ye
been, and how do ye expect to continue to be?"

Tim McCabe was an Irishman who, when overtaken by misfortune in San
Francisco, found Jeff Graham the good Samaritan, and he could never
show sufficient gratitude therefor. It was only one of the many kindly
deeds the old miner was always performing, but he did not meet in every
case with such honest thankfulness.

Jeff clasped his hand warmly, and then looked at the smiling boys, to
whom he introduced his friend, and who shook their hands. He eyed them
closely, and, with the quizzical expression natural to many of his
people, said:

"And these are the laddies ye wrote me about? Ye said they were likely
broths of boys; but, Jiff, ye didn't do them justice--they desarved
more."

"Tim is always full of blarney," explained Jeff, who, it was evident,
was fond of the merry Irishman; "so you mustn't mind him and his ways."

Roswell and Frank were attracted by Jeff's friend. He was one of those
persons who, des