ide, the cots were
all in place, but there was not a line of writing from any friendly hand
to tell him where they had gone, or where his property had been left.

He walked toward the business part of the town and turned down Main
Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent
in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his
torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a
dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who
has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the
changes which had come upon the street during those few days.

The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of
boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if
someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest
of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches
marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected
it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in
the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors
rising sharply in the sun.

Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his
appearance, scraped and dug among the debris, searching for what might
have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of
sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp
exclamations and triumphant cries.

Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered
leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched
and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr.
Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped
accumulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must
have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no
glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the space which
the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest.

The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came
between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some
people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out;
the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned.

No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote
Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time's count,
the