ght cold on the Range, and was suffering from an old
arrow wound in the lung. We had a long conversation without adverting
to the former one, and he told me some of the present circumstances of
his ruined life. It is piteous that a man like him, in the prime of
life, should be destitute of home and love, and live a life of darkness
in a den with no companions but guilty memories, and a dog which many
people think is the nobler animal of the two. I urged him to give up
the whisky which at present is his ruin, and his answer had the ring of
a sad truth in it: "I cannot, it binds me hand and foot--I cannot give
up the only pleasure I have." His ideas of right are the queerest
possible. He says that he believes in God, but what he knows or
believes of God's law I know not. To resent insult with your revolver,
to revenge yourself on those who have injured you, to be true to a
comrade and share your last crust with him, to be chivalrous to good
women, to be generous and hospitable, and at the last to die
game--these are the articles of his creed, and I suppose they are
received by men of his stamp. He hates Evans with a bitter hatred, and
Evans returns it, having undergone much provocation from Jim in his
moods of lawlessness and violence, and being not a little envious of
the fascination which his manners and conversation have for the
strangers who come up here.

On returning down the gulch the view was grander than I have ever seen
it, the gulch in dark shadow, the park below lying in intense sunlight,
with all the majestic canyons which sweep down upon it in depths of
infinite blue gloom, and above, the pearly peaks, dazzling in purity
and glorious in form, cleft the turquoise blue of the sky. How shall I
ever leave this "land which is very far off"? How CAN I ever leave it?
is the real question. We are going on the principle, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die," and the stores are melting away. The two
meals are not an economical plan, for we are so much more hungry that
we eat more than when we had three. We had a good deal of sacred music
to-day, to make it as like Sunday as possible. The "faint melancholy"
of this winter loneliness is very fascinating.

How glorious the amber fires of the winter dawns are, and how
gloriously to-night the crimson clouds descended just to the mountain
tops and were reflected on the pure surface of the snow!

The door of this room looks due north, and as I write th