ant talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily
turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected
of the glow that many waters cannot quench.

Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark's
eating-house, was playing "mumbly-peg" with Texas Tyler. They had been
working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their
pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points in
the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of the
company to umpire some disputed point.

But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to sing,
in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention of first
one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning and
knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke the image
of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most of them.
There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its measured
phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had taken place in
their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn, "Flee as a Bird to the
Mountain," are the words usually sung to the air.

Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: "Phwat th' divil
is ut about that chune that Oi'm thinkin' of?"

"This," said the man with the barytone voice, "is the tune that Nick
Steele saved his neck to."

"Begorra, that's ut. I wasn't there mesilf, but Oi've heard th' story told
more times than Oi've years to me credit."

"My father was in that necktie party," spoke up a young cow-puncher, "and
I've heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always wondered why
the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it after the thing
was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a sharp on things
like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion. Said that
Steele got control of the whole outfit and mesmerized 'em so they couldn't
do a thing to him."

Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down
through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher,
lighting a cigarette, began:

"It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was
sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one day
when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it
and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their