guessed it by the belt
and revolver holster which he wore about his rotund waist. In every
other respect Jolly Roger appeared to be not only a harmless creature,
but one especially designed by the Creator of things to spread cheer
and good-will wherever he went. His age, if he had seen fit to disclose
it, was thirty-four.

There seemed, at first, to be nothing that even a contented man might
laugh at in the cabin, and even less to bring merriment from one on
whose head a price was set--unless it was the delicious aroma of a
supper just about ready to be served. On a little stove in the farthest
corner of the shack the breasts of two spruce partridges were turning
golden brown in a skittle, and from the broken neck of a coffee pot a
rich perfume was rising with the steam. Piping hot in the open oven
half a dozen baked potatoes were waiting in their crisp brown jackets.

From the table Jolly Roger turned, rubbing his hands and chuckling as
he went for a third time to a low shelf built against the cabin wall.
There he carefully raised a mass of old papers from a box, and at the
movement there came a protesting squeak, and a little brown mouse
popped up to the edge of it and peered at him with a pair of bright
little questioning eyes.

"You little devil!" he exulted. "You nervy little devil!"

He raised the papers higher, and again looked upon his discovery of
half an hour ago. In a soft nest lay four tiny mice, still naked and
blind, and as he lowered the mass of papers the mother burrowed back to
them, and he could hear her squeaking and chirruping to the little
ones, as if she was trying to tell them not to be afraid of this man,
for she knew him very well, and it wasn't in his mind to hurt them. And
Jolly Roger, as he returned to the setting of his table, laughed
again--and the laugh rolled out into the golden sunset, and from the
top of a spruce at the edge of the creek a big blue-jay answered it in
a riotous challenge.

But at the bottom of that laugh, if one could have looked a bit deeper,
was something more than the naked little mice in the nest of torn-up
paper. Today happiness had strangely come this gay-hearted freebooter's
way, and he might have reached out, and seized it, and have kept it for
his own. But in the hour of his opportunity he had refused it--because
he was an outlaw--because strong within him was a peculiar code of
honor all his own. There was nothing of man-made religion in the soul
of Roge