t into residence with his
wife and the twins.

The pressure of work lessened, he had a moment in which to look
around. And with the thought of his twins on his mind, and all his
wife had once been accustomed to, he quickly realized the necessity of
green vegetables in his _menage_. So he promptly flew to the task of
arranging a cabbage patch. The result was a foregone conclusion. He
dug and planted his patch. Nor was it until the work was completed
that it filtered through to his comprehension that he had selected the
only patch in the neighborhood with a heavy underlay of gravel and
lime stone.

But his crowning effort was his search for gold. There are
well-established geological laws governing the prospector's craft
which no experienced gold-seeker ever departs from. These were all
carefully explained to him by willing tongues. Then, after poring over
all he had learned, and thought and searched for two days and two
nights, he finally discovered a spot where no other prospector had
staked the ground.

It was a curious, gloomy sort of patch, nearly half-a-mile up the
creek from the camp, and further in towards the mountains. Just at
this spot the banks of the creek were high, there was an unusual
blackness about the soil, and it gave out a faint but unrecognizable
odor, that, in the bright mountain air, was quite pleasant. For
several hundred yards the ground of this flat was rankly spongy, with
an oozy surface. Then, beyond, lay a black greasy-looking marsh, and
further on again the hills rose abruptly with the facets of
auriferous-looking soil, such as the prospector loves to contemplate.

Scipio pondered. And though the conditions outraged all he had been
told of the craft he was embarking upon, he plunged his pick into this
flat, and set to work with characteristic good-will.

The men of the camp when they discovered his venture shook their heads
and laughed. Then their laugh died out and their hard eyes grew
serious. But no one interfered. They were all seeking gold.

This was Scipio's position on Suffering Creek, but it does not tell
half of what lay somewhere in the back of his quaintly-poised mind. No
one who knew him failed to realize his worship for his wife. His was a
love such as rarely falls to the lot of woman. And his devotion to his
girl and boy twins was something quite beyond words. These things were
the mainspring of his life, and drove him to such superlative degrees
of self-sacrifice that