e Sam wrathfully. "Who done
it but knockers like you? I 'spose if Capital was settin' right
alongside you'd up and tell 'em you never saw a ledge yet in this camp
hold out below a hundred feet?"

Uncle Bill replied tranquilly:

"Would if they ast me."

"You'd rather see us all starve than boost."

"Jest as lief as to lie."

"Well, that's what we're goin' to do if somethin' don't happen this
Spring. She'll own this camp. Porcupine Jim turned over 'the Underdog'
yesterday and Lannigan's finished eatin' on 'The Gold-dust Twins'." He
moved away disconsolately. "Lord, I wish the stage would get in."

At this juncture Judge George Petty turned in from the street, hitting
both sides of the snow tunnel as he came. He fumbled at the door-knob in
a suspicious manner and then stumbled joyously inside.

"Boys," he announced exuberantly, "I think I heerd the stage."

The group about the red-hot stove regarded him coldly and no one moved.
It was like him, the ingrate, to get drunk alone. When he tried to wedge
a chair into the circle they made no effort to give him room.

"You don't believe me!" The Judge's mouth, which had been upturned at
the corners like a "dry" new moon, as promptly became a "wet" one and
drooped as far the other way.

"Somethin' you been takin' must a quickened your hearin'," said Yankee
Sam sourly. "She's an hour and a half yet from bein' due."

"'Twere nothin'," he answered on the defensive, "but a few drops of
vaniller and some arnicy left over from that sprain. You oughtn't to
feel hard toward me," he quavered, wilting under the unfriendly eyes.
"I'd a passed it if there'd been enough to go aroun'."

"An' after all we've done fer ye," said Lannigan, "makin' ye Jestice of
the Peace to keep ye off the town."

"Jedge," said Uncle Bill deliberately, "you're gittin' almost no-account
enough to be a Forest Ranger. I aims to write to Washington when your
term is out and git you in the Service."

The Judge jumped up as though he had been stung.

"Bill, we been friends for twenty year, an' I'll take considerable off
you, but I want you to understan' they'r a _limit_. You kin call me a
wolf, er a Mormon, er a son-of-a-gun, but, Bill, you can't call me no
Forest Ranger! Bill," pleadingly, and his face crumpled in sudden tears,
"you didn't mean that, did you? You wouldn't insult an ol', ol' frien'?"

"You got the ear-marks," Uncle Bill replied unmoved. "For a year now
you've walked forty feet around t