, Ernest, and you can find another place."

"Shall I fasten the window?"

"No. I am going to make it easy for my friend, Burns, to get in. Whether
he will find it as easy to get out will be another matter."

Nothing was said to the miners about the presence of a thief in the
settlement. At that time there was no toleration for thieves. The
punishment visited upon them was short, sharp and decisive. The judge most
in favor was Judge Lynch, and woe be to the offender who ventured to
interfere with the rights of property.

Had Luke breathed a word about Burns, half a dozen miners would have
volunteered to stand guard, and would thus have interfered with Tom
Burns's visit.

"I want to keep all the fun to myself, Ernest," said Luke. "We'll give him
a lesson he won't soon forget. If I told the boys they'd hang him up in
short order. I don't want to take the fellow's life, but I'll give him a
first-class scare."

It was about ten minutes of twelve when Tom Burns, leaving his place of
concealment, walked with eager steps toward the mining settlement. The one
street was not illuminated, for Oreville had not got along as far as that.
The moon gave an indistinct light, relieving the night of a part of its
gloom.

Burns looked from one cabin to another with a wistful glance.

"I suppose some of these miners have got a lot of gold-dust hidden away in
their shanties," he said to himself. "I wish I knew where I could light on
some of their treasure."

But then it occurred to him that every miner was probably armed, and would
make it dangerous to any intruder.

So Tom Burns kept on his way. He was troubled by no conscientious
scruples. He had got beyond that long ago. Sometimes it did occur to him
to wonder how it would seem to settle down as a man of respectability and
influence, taking a prominent part in the affairs of town and church.

"It might have been," he muttered. "My father was a man of that sort. Why
not I? If I hadn't gone wrong in my early days, if I had not been tempted
by the devil to rob the storekeeper for whom I worked, and so made myself
an outcast and a pariah, who knows but I might have been at this moment
Thomas Burns, Esq., of some municipality, instead of Tom Burns, the tramp?
However, it is foolish to speculate about this. I am what I am, and there
is little chance of my being anything else."

So he dismissed the past, and recalled the work he had set for himself.

Everything was still. In the m