ust stuck his
tongue in his cheek.

Neither McLean nor the wounded half-breed were seriously hurt, and in
a week both were well again--the one going lamely about his business
and the other in jail beside his fellows.

The trial was placed on the calendar for the next Assizes which had
been arranged for the following month, when most of the Fall crops
would be in and shipped, thereby leaving twelve good men and true free
to devote some of their time to the requirements of law and justice.

Jim went back again to the Court House as Government Agent Thompson's
assistant. Phil kept to the forge, serious and tremendously earnest in
following the calling he had been so strangely thrust into.

He could not fail to notice, day by day, the gradual change that was
coming over Sol Hanson. Sol had not been drunk for weeks. He dressed
himself much more neatly than formerly, although what it was exactly
that gave him the smarter appearance, Phil could not make out until
Smiler led him to understand by signs and grimaces that Sol now washed
his face and hands mornings and evenings, instead of every Sunday
morning as formerly.

But there was something else.

Sol's blue eyes had contracted a habit of gazing into the heart of the
fire while he leaned abstractedly on the bellows handle. He became
interested in the train arrivals. He posted letters and called every
day at the post office for mail. Whether he got any or not Phil was
unable to say definitely. But he got a sneaking suspicion after a
while, that the soft-hearted, simple, big fellow was either answering
letters through the Seattle _Matrimonial Times_, or corresponding with
some lady friend. He felt convinced that Sol was badly, or rather,
madly in love.

He probed the big Swede with the sharp end of a question now and
again, but Sol was wonderfully impervious.

One day, Jim and Phil were strolling leisurely up Main Street from the
Kenora Hotel where they had been having an early lunch together. The
north train had just come in and a few drummers, some incoming
Chinamen and a number of straggling passengers were spreading
themselves for their different destinations, carrying grips and canvas
bags with their samples and their belongings as the case might be.

Neither Jim nor Phil was paying any heed to what was a daily
occurrence, until they were stopped by a buxom, fair-haired, blue-eyed
maiden, with a pleasant smile on her big, innocent face. She was
cheaply but bec