ement, to the tune of a string of
iron-clad oaths that fell like chain-shot. They called him the Parson,
because it was said he could outswear any man in the camp, and that was
saying a great deal, wonderful as were his achievements in this line.

After the announcement, every one of the ten men there took a look at
the little triangular fragment of looking-glass that was tacked up over
the fire-place.

The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event; but she came too
early in the world's history to create much sensation.

Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman on earth to-day--in
this day of committees, conventions, brass-band receptions, and woman's
rights!

You imagine a princess had come to camp, a good angel, with song and
harps, or, at the least, carpet-bags, and extended crinoline,
waterfalls, and false hair, a pack-train of Saratoga trunks, and all the
adjuncts of civilization. Not at all. She had secured a cabin, by some
accident, very near to that of the boy poet, and settled down there
quietly to go to work.

Yes, Limber Tim had "seed" her. She had ridden the bell mule of the
pack-train down the mountain and into town. He told how the hats went
up in the air from in and about the Howling Wilderness, and how the boys
had gone up in rows to the broken looking-glass in the new barber-shop,
and how some had even polished their bowie-knives on their boots, and
sat down and tried to see themselves in the shining blade, and adjust
their dress accordingly.

In a little time Sandy bent silently over the table in the cabin, and
with his sleeves rolled up high on his great hairy arms, and kneaded
away at the dough in the gold pan in silence, while Limber Tim wrestled
nervously with the frying-pan by the fire.

"Is she purty, Limber?"

"Purty, Sandy? She's purtier nur a spotted dog."

Sandy sighed, for he felt that there was little hope for him, and again
fell into a moody silence.

There was a run that night on the little Jew shop at the corner of the
Howling Wilderness. Before midnight the little kinky-headed Israelite
had not a shirt, collar, or handkerchief, or white fabric of any kind
whatever in the shop.

It might have been a bit of first-class and old-fashioned chivalry that
had lain dormant in these great hairy breasts, or it might have been
their strict regard for the appropriateness of names that made these
men at once call her the "Widder;" or it might have been some sudden
r