tentions of becoming purchasers,
but if your friend merely wants to stop among the mountains for the
fun of the thing, why, he's welcome to stay all summer for aught I
care. As to accommodations, I think we can fix you both very
comfortably. There are two boarding houses near the mines, for the
miners, of course you would not go there; but old Jim Maverick and his
wife run a boarding house about a quarter of a mile from there that is
very good, and is a sort of stopping place for any tourists that find
their way out there. I stop there myself, and I know Maverick and his
wife are glad of all the boarders they can get. I believe they already
had a lady when I was there last week, a school teacher or something
of that sort, who had just come, and I think you will find it very
comfortable there."

Having learned that they would have to start for the camp at eight
o'clock the next morning, Houston took his leave, promising to be in
readiness at that time. He next visited a number of assay offices,
where he learned a good many valuable points regarding the different
classes of ore in that vicinity; then having purchased two or three
works on practical mining and mineralogy, which he thought might be of
assistance to him, he returned to the hotel, where he entertained
Rutherford until dinner with an account of their trip to be taken on
the morrow and the accommodations that awaited them, with the added
attraction of the society of a solitary school teacher, whom their
imaginations already depicted as of uncertain age, with short hair and
spectacles. Many were Rutherford's speculations concerning this
individual.

"I've had the pleasure of the acquaintance of two specimens of that
class," said he, "one was in the Catskill Mountains; she had a
geological fad, and went out every morning with a little hammer, to
hammer among the rocks all day; the other was a botanist, and returned
every evening about covered with plants which she had pulled up, root
and branch; I wonder which of them this one will resemble."

"We shall soon see," said Houston.

CHAPTER VI.

Nearly twenty-five miles from the nearest town, and not a human being
visible from the point of observation occupied by Miss Gladden, as she
slowly swung backward and forward in her hammock under the pines, half
way up the mountain side; and the only sign of human life was a faint,
blue smoke curling upward among the evergreens on one side, at the
base of the m