e who "bached" had stacked their dishes
and hurried from the supper-table to the Hinds House, where the regular
boarders were already tilted on the rear legs of their chairs with
their heads resting comfortably on the particular oily spot on the
unbleached muslin sheeting, which each recognized as having been made by
weeks of contact with his own back hair.

A little apart and preoccupied sat Uncle Bill with the clipping in his
wallet burning like a red-hot coal. He could have swallowed being
"carried down the mountain side," but the paragraph wherein "tears of
gratitude rained down his withered cheeks" stuck, as he phrased it, in
his craw. It set him thinking hard of Bruce Burt and the young fellow's
deliberate sacrifice of his life for one old "Chink." Somehow he could
not rid himself of blame that he had let him go alone. As soon as he
could get back to Ore City he had headed a search party that had failed
to locate even the tent under the unusual fall of snow. Well, if Burt
had taken a life, even accidentally, he had in expiation given his own.

As he brooded, occasionally the old man glanced at Wilbur Dill. He had
seen him before--but where? The sharp-faced, sharp-eyed Yellow-Leg was
associated in the older man's mind with something shady, but what it was
he could not for the time recall.

"Rosie, perhaps Mr. Dill would like to hear 'When the Robins Nest
Again,'" Ma Snow suggested in the sweet, ingratiating tones of a mother
with two unattached daughters.

Mr. Dill declared that it was one of his favorite compositions, so Miss
Rosie obligingly stood forth with the dog-eared music.

"When the Robins Nest Again, and the flower-r-rs--" she was warbling,
but they never bloomed, for Mrs. Snow started for the door, explaining:
"I'm sure I heard a scrunching." She threw it open and the yellow light
fell upon a gaunt figure leaning against the entrance of the snow
tunnel. The man was covered with frost and icicles where his breath had
frozen on his cap and upturned collar, while it was obvious from his
snow-caked knees and elbows that he had fallen often. He stood staring
dumbly at the light and warmth and at Ma Snow, then he stooped and began
fumbling clumsily at the strappings of his snow-shoes.

"Won't you-all come in?" Ma Snow, recovering a little from her surprise,
asked hospitably.

He pitched forward and would again have gone down but that he threw out
his hand and caught the door-jamb.

"Bruce Burt! Hell's