in his arms.

"Oh, there's a terrible animal in the mining ditch. I heard it! It's
coming this way! A grizzley, I know!" Bob peered into the ditch.

"Why, girl, it's only drunken old Solly Jake going home holding his jug
out of the water. He gets into the ditch so he won't lose the way."

"But how does he know when to get out?"

"Well, when he bangs his head on the overbrace of the first flume, he
knows he's home and crawls out." Bob began gently to withdraw his arms.

"If you let me go now," she whispered, "I'll wish that it had been a
grizzley."

"I must take you home."

"Oh, you have! I am home," clinging to him desperately, "I want no other
in the world than this one."

"But my scarred--"

The girl reached up, drawing down his tall, dark head in her arms. She
kissed his mutilated cheek, then pressed it tenderly against her soft,
bare throat. It did not stay long, as Bob felt that such kisess should
be returned without delay.

"Hu-ray," cheered Solly Jake, waving his whisky jug, "tale ended right!
Time f'r 'nother drink, boys!" and standing up to his middle in water he
proceeded to demonstrate his idea.

Curley Coppers the Jack

VII

"On Selby Flat we live in style;
We'll stay right here till we make our pile.
We're sure to do it after a while,
Then good-bye to Californy!"

--Canfield's "Diary of a Forty-Niner."

The beautiful Casino at Monte Carlo stands in one of the loveliest
settings on earth. Facing the blue Mediterranean and enhanced by the
exquisitely kept marble villas of Monaco, it may justly be called the
acme of gambling institutions. It has become an institution through the
years. Time has brought it stability.

Its absolute antithesis were the gambling dens of '49. Built over-night,
destined to remain if the mines were rich, and to melt away if they
pinched out, the gambling hells were sometimes the veriest makeshifts.
Canvas covered, dirt floored, except for the dancing platform, rough
red-wood bar and tables; surrounded by all the sordidness of Hurdy
Gurdy town in which fortunes, and reputations, and lives were bid, and
shuffled, and lost, as indiscriminately as grains of dust blown into the
ever-changing sea.

The thirst for gold is universal. In those half-mad days of delirious
seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the
clod, and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played
no favorites. The tale is told of