for she knew
something of Jim.

"_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git
no 'Courting' from _we_."

Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers,"
she said. "I wanted to be sure."

Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.

"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur
weeks at a time."

Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her
beautiful face.

"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.

Marian nodded.

"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself
into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita.
Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."

In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a
degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared,
escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the
presence of "the ladies."

"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to,
and them of mine wus about dead beat."

Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes
to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane
epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which
he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his
power in regard to the man she had come to find.

No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral
part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for
which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but
"Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.

Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and
slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above
him.

There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had
never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and
aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an
outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that
he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and
his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him
wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story:
that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and
trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he
had st