oor fellow's skull in twain; and, after so many
months of close companionship, the death of the two sailors was keenly
felt.

The best way to banish painful thoughts, however, as Mr Rawlings knew
from sad experience, was to engage in active employment; so he did not
allow the men to remain idle, although he gave them ample time for a
rest after the fight was over.

Summoning to his aid Noah Webster, who, like some of the others who had
received trivial wounds, made light of the bullet hole through his arm,
he mustered the hands late in the afternoon of the eventful day, and
delivered a short practical address to them before resuming operations--
a speech which, being to the point, had the desired effect of making the
men go back to their work with a will.

"Now, lads," said he, "we must be up and going. Sitting there talking
will not bring back the poor fellows that have gone. I mourn our
comrades just as much as you do, for they worked steadfastly, like the
honest, true-hearted men they were, through the hard time of toil and
trouble we had till recently, and at the last fought and died bravely in
the defence of the camp. But, crying over them won't help them now; all
we can do is to bury them where they so nobly fell, and then turn our
hands to carry on our work to the end that is now so near in view, just
as they would have insisted on doing if they had been alive still and
with us!"

There was no more lethargy after Mr Rawlings' exhortation: as Solomon
says,--"A word in season, how good it is!"

The men sprang up with alacrity to set about what he had suggested
rather than ordered; and, as soon as graves had been dug in the shelter
trench of the rampart that Tom Cannon and Black Harry had held so
courageously against the Indians, and their bodies interred with all
proper solemnity, Mr Rawlings himself reading the burial service over
their remains, the miners grasped their picks and shovels with one hand
as they wiped away a tear with the other, and went back to the mine,
some of them possibly with the reflection that, all things considered,
their slain mates were perhaps after all now better off than themselves!

STORY ONE, CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

SAILOR BILL'S STORY.

After the sad ceremony which he had just performed, Mr Rawlings did not
feel much inclined for gold-seeking or any worldly affairs, although he
went towards the mine as a matter of duty; and when he reached the
stamps he found Ernest Wi