r gripsack and was about to start off
into the darkness, when one of the miners accosted him.

"By Gar, mate! you know how to speak to the cops," he said in a voice of
awe. "It was grand to hear you. Let me carry your grip and show you the
road. I'm passing Shafter's on the way to my own shack."

There was a chorus of friendly "Good-nights" from the other miners
as they passed from the platform. Before ever he had set foot in it,
McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in Vermissa.

The country had been a place of terror; but the town was in its way
even more depressing. Down that long valley there was at least a certain
gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and the clouds of drifting smoke,
while the strength and industry of man found fitting monuments in the
hills which he had spilled by the side of his monstrous excavations.
But the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor. The broad
street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of
muddy snow. The sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps
served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with
its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.

As they approached the centre of the town the scene was brightened by a
row of well-lit stores, and even more by a cluster of saloons and gaming
houses, in which the miners spent their hard-earned but generous wages.

"That's the Union House," said the guide, pointing to one saloon which
rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel. "Jack McGinty is the boss
there."

"What sort of a man is he?" McMurdo asked.

"What! have you never heard of the boss?"

"How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a stranger in
these parts?"

"Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country. It's been
in the papers often enough."

"What for?"

"Well," the miner lowered his voice--"over the affairs."

"What affairs?"

"Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without offense.
There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in these parts, and
that's the affairs of the Scowrers."

"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of
murderers, are they not?"

"Hush, on your life!" cried the miner, standing still in alarm, and
gazing in amazement at his companion. "Man, you won't live long in these
parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man has had the
life beaten out of him for less."

"Well, I know