gle, and about as entertaining as a
mummy. They're mostly that kind, or else the gushing, adoring sort,
that can't talk of anything but Browning, or Emerson, or theosophy, or
something of that kind; and the most conceited lot of creatures that
ever lived."

Meanwhile, the train wound in and out among the mountains, stopping
for a few moments at a small town where huge smelters were pouring
forth their clouds of dense smoke, darkening the air until it seemed
more like night than day; then on a few miles farther, to the little
station known as the "Y," so-called on account of the form of the spur
tracks owned by the mining company, by which the ore was brought down
from the mines above.

At the station was a store containing general mining supplies, with
the post-office in one front window, a boarding and lodging house, and
three or four saloons and gambling houses, these last designed to
catch the wages of the miners from the surrounding camps.

Mr. Blaisdell having found one of the superintendents who had come
down with a team for supplies, they were soon on their way up the
gulch, and in the course of an hour were left at the office buildings,
while the team went on to the mines.

Here Rutherford waited in the outer room of the little unpainted,
frame building, while Mr. Blaisdell took Houston into the further
room, and introduced him to Morgan, the general superintendent, and to
his work, at the same time. Then, having seen Houston duly installed
at his post of duty, perched on a wabbly stool, before a rickety,
ink-bespattered desk, beside a window gray with the dust and smoke of
ages, through which a few straggling sunbeams fell, Mr. Blaisdell
sailed complacently forth to escort Rutherford to Jim Maverick's
boarding house, whither the baggage had already been taken by the
team; then, all necessary arrangements for rooms and board having been
completed, he went out to the mines, leaving Rutherford alone in the
camp of the Philistines. He found no one, however, more formidable
than Mrs. Maverick, an old woman bent nearly double, with white hair
and hollow, deep-sunken eyes, so faded it was impossible to tell what
their original color might have been, and the "help," a stout,
red-cheeked, coarse-featured girl of fifteen, whom Mrs. Maverick
called "Minty," but who rejoiced in the euphonious name of Araminta
Bixby, and who ogled and grinned at Rutherford until he found the task
of preserving his dignity more difficul