from the shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty
she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the
closet in which he was concealed and escape with him. She left a boy of
three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The Old Man's present wife
had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.

Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness that
it was the "Old Man's house," and that, invoking the Divine Power, if
the case were his own, he would invite whom he pleased, even if in
so doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further
remarked, should contend against him vainly. All this delivered with a
terseness and vigor lost in this necessary translation.

"In course. Certainly. Thet's it," said the Old Man with a sympathetic
frown. "Thar's no trouble about THET. It's my own house, built every
stick on it myself. Don't you be afeard o' her, boys. She MAY cut up a
trifle rough,--ez wimmin do,--but she'll come round." Secretly the Old
Man trusted to the exaltation of liquor and the power of courageous
example to sustain him in such an emergency.

As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson's Bar, had not
spoken. He now took his pipe from his lips. "Old Man, how's that yer
Johnny gettin' on? Seems to me he didn't look so peart last time I seed
him on the bluff heavin' rocks at Chinamen. Didn't seem to take much
interest in it. Thar was a gang of 'em by yar yesterday,--drownded out
up the river,--and I kinder thought o' Johnny, and how he'd miss 'em!
May be now, we'd be in the way ef he wus sick?"

The father, evidently touched not only by this pathetic picture of
Johnny's deprivation, but by the considerate delicacy of the speaker,