with a border of a darker color. He looked like an overworked Christy
minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There
were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of
unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already
grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic
experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of
Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous presence entirely on
his daughter.

"Well, what's up now? Yer ye are calling me from work an hour before
noon. Dog my skin, ef I ever get fairly limbered up afore it's 'Dad!'
and 'Oh, Dad!'"

To Lance's intense satisfaction the girl received this harangue with
an air of supreme indifference, and when "Dad" had relapsed into an
unintelligible, and, as it seemed to Lance, a half-frightened muttering,
she said coolly,--

"Ye'd better drop that axe and scoot round getten' this stranger some
breakfast and some grub to take with him. He's one of them San Francisco
sports out here trout fishing in the branch. He's got adrift from his
party, has lost his rod and fixins, and had to camp out last night in
the Gin and Ginger Woods."

"That's just it; it's allers suthin like that," screamed the old man,
dashing his fist on his leg in a feeble, impotent passion, but without
looking at Lance. "Why in blazes don't he go up to that there blamed
hotel on the summit? Why in thunder--" But here he caught his daughter's
large, freckled eyes full in his own. He blinked feebly, his voice fell
into a tone of whining entreaty. "Now, look yer, Flip, it's playing