with eyes wide and gaping mouths, squatted some
twenty-five or thirty boys of varying ages and of varying colours and
nationalities, but all of a kin when it came to appreciation of the
universal language--the language of an exciting story.

Jim was reading to them from one of his most bloody dime novels, and
the wonderful elocution he possessed never displayed itself with
greater zest. His wavy, reddish-brown hair swept his forehead
becomingly; his face, thin, keen and full of cultured intelligence,
betrayed every emotion as he declaimed; and his long arms and tapering
fingers moved in a ceaseless rhythm of gesticulation.

It was the same old stuff:--

"'Hal, the boy rider of the Western plains, stood on the brink of the
chasm: behind him, three thousand feet of sheer precipice to the
seething, boiling waters and jagged rocks below;--before him, the
onrushing bandits.

"'Black Dan, outstripping the others, sprang on Hal, mouthing fearful
oaths. With astounding agility, Hal stepped aside, caught Dan by the
middle, and, swinging him high over his head, sent him hurtling, with
ear-splitting shrieks, down, sheer down to his doom.

"'This staggered Dan's followers for a second, until Cross-eyed Dick,
jibing his comrades for their cowardice, next rushed in upon our
dauntless hero. Hal drew his dagger from his belt and bravely awaited
the onslaught. When Cross-eyed Dick was within a few yards of him, he
raised his arm and threw his dagger deftly and with terrific force,
burying it to the hilt in the train-robber's windpipe. With a clotted
gurgle--blood spurting from his mortal wound--Hal's assailant still
came rushing on. He staggered on the brink for a moment, then--without
another sound--he toppled over and joined his dead leader who was
lying, a beaten pulp, among the boulders, far below.'"

On and on Jim went, making the hackneyed, original; the ridiculous,
feasible; the impossible, real; until even Phil hated to pull himself
away from the scene, to await a more convenient season for his
endeavours to bring Jim back to himself.

If ever there was poetry in a "Deadwood Dick," thought Phil, surely it
was then.

Feeling that Jim was in harmless company for the time being, Phil left
him, intending to round him up later.

An hour afterwards he returned to Mrs. Clunie's to have a look at the
horses he had stabled. To his great surprise and annoyance he found
the place empty of all but his own and Mrs. Clunie's anima