the
aggregate changed hands--but no cash. It was like the good old days to
come again, to see the embryo magnates whispering in corners, to feel
once more a delicious sense of mystery and plotting in the air. Real
estate advanced in leaps and bounds and "Lemonade Dan" overhauled the
bar fixtures in the Bucket o' Blood, and stuffed a gunny-sack into a
broken window pane with a view to opening up. In every shack there was
an undercurrent of excitement and after the dull days of monotony few
could calm themselves to a really good night's sleep. They talked in
thousands and the clerk's stock of Cincos, that had been dead money on
his hands for over three years, "moved" in three days--sold out to the
last cigar!

When the time arrived that they had calculated Dill should return, even
to the hour, the person who was coming back from the end of the snow
tunnel at the front door of the Hinds House, that commanded a good view
of the trail, always met someone going out to ask if there was "any
sight of 'em?" and he, in turn, took his stand at the mouth of the
tunnel, until driven in by the cold. In this way, there was nearly
always someone doing lookout duty.

Ore City's brow was corrugated with anxiety when Dill and Porcupine Jim
had exceeded by three days the time allotted them for their stay.
Wouldn't it be like the camp's confounded luck if Capital fell off of
something and broke its neck?

Their relief was almost hysterical when one evening at sunset Lannigan
shouted joyfully: "Here they come!"

They dashed through the tunnel to see Mr. Dill dragging one foot
painfully after the other to the hotel. He seemed indifferent to the
boisterous greeting, groaning merely:

"Oh-h-h, what a hill!"

"We been two days a makin' it," Jim vouchsafed cheerfully. "Last night
we slept out on the snow."

"You seem some stove up." Uncle Bill eyed Dill critically. "And looks
like you have fell off twenty pounds."

"Stove up!" exclaimed Dill plaintively. "Between Jim's cooking and that
hill I took up four notches in my belt. I wouldn't make that trip again
in winter if the Alaska Treadwell was awaiting me as a gift at the other
end."

"You'll git used to it," consoled Uncle Bill, "you'll learn to like it
when you're down there makin' that there 'juice.' I mind the time I went
to North Dakoty on a visit--I longed for one of these hills to climb to
rest myself. The first day they set me out on the level, I ran away--it
took four men t