illet de beef, and saucisson au juice, but Billy the desk
clerk has considerable trouble with the spelling.

The Rats' Cooler, of course, closed down, or rather Mr. Smith closed it
for repairs, and there is every likelihood that it will hardly open for
three years. But the caff is there. They don't use the grills, because
there's no need to, with the hotel kitchen so handy.

The "girl room," I may say, was never opened. Mr. Smith promised it, it
is true, for the winter, and still talks of it. But somehow there's been
a sort of feeling against it. Every one in town admits that every big
hotel in the city has a "girl room" and that it must be all right.
Still, there's a certain--well, you know how sensitive opinion is in a
place like Mariposa.

TWO. The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe

It was not until the mining boom, at the time when everybody went simply
crazy over the Cobalt and Porcupine mines of the new silver country near
the Hudson Bay, that Jefferson Thorpe reached what you might call public
importance in Mariposa.

Of course everybody knew Jeff and his little barber shop that stood just
across the street from Smith's Hotel. Everybody knew him and everybody
got shaved there. From early morning, when the commercial travellers off
the 6.30 express got shaved into the resemblance of human beings, there
were always people going in and out of the barber shop.

Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank, took his morning shave from
Jeff as a form of resuscitation, with enough wet towels laid on his face
to stew him and with Jeff moving about in the steam, razor in hand, as
grave as an operating surgeon.

Then, as I think I said, Mr. Smith came in every morning and there was
a tremendous outpouring of Florida water and rums, essences and revivers
and renovators, regardless of expense. What with Jeff's white coat and
Mr. Smith's flowered waistcoat and the red geranium in the window and
the Florida water and the double extract of hyacinth, the little shop
seemed multi-coloured and luxurious enough for the annex of a Sultan's
harem.

But what I mean is that, till the mining boom, Jefferson Thorpe never
occupied a position of real prominence in Mariposa. You couldn't, for
example, have compared him with a man like Golgotha Gingham, who,
as undertaker, stood in a direct relation to life and death, or to
Trelawney, the postmaster, who drew money from the Federal Government of
Canada, and was regarded as virtual