smoke-stacks belching forth their black clouds; the big buildings
about them; the great heap of waste stuff at the right; the dump-cars
running out and back; the miners' shanties bare and brown on the left,
running up the hillside, hugging the break-neck steeps; the handsome
house on the south which he knew must be the superintendent's home;
the tall, ungainly brick structure of the company's store in the heart
of things; the far-off thump, thump, and the ceaseless roar of the
machinery--all this made a deep impression on Job.

For a year, at least, he was to live amid this scene. What a strange
life it was for Job there at the Yellow Jacket! There, in sight of the
eternal hills; there, only five miles, in an air-line, from the quiet
ranch, from Bess, the great barns, the world of nature, and home--and
yet it seemed five thousand miles away to him. Shut in that little
office behind the iron bars, bending over the great books sometimes
far into the night, looking out each pay-day through a little arched
window on grimy faces and rough-bearded men who held out toil-worn
hands to receive the week's earnings which long before another week
would find their way into some saloon-keeper's till or gambler's
pocket.

The only out-door world he saw was between the rear door of the office
and the long, low boarding-house where the foremen and clerks lived.
One corner of the great room upstairs, where a hard bed ran up against
the roof, and one place at the long, oilcloth-covered table, he had
the privilege to call his own for the modest sum of a gold piece a
week. He had every other Sunday to himself by the extreme favor of the
"boss," on whose own calendar Sunday never came, and who could not see
why it should on any one's else.

At first, Job left the narrow, well-worn streets, always, it seemed to
him, crowded with an endless procession of dirty, pale-faced,
muscular, rough men going to and from shifts; left them far behind and
tramped over to the Frost Creek school, redolent with peculiar
memories, to the afternoon service. But when the snows came and winter
set in, he dared not take the long tramps, but hugged the fire at his
boarding-house, read his little Testament, and tried in vain to find
one spot out of hearing of the noise of tramping feet, the roar of the
stamp-mill, and the hoarse laughter and rude stories and language of
the men ever coming and going.

He could never get away from the sound, and only in an old, a