to find, when all the seams were sewn, that
the little overalls failed to look like any garment he had ever seen on
a child. When he tried them on Lovin Child, next day, Cash took one look
and bolted from the cabin with his hand over his mouth.

When he came back an hour or so later, Lovin Child was wearing his
ragged rompers, and Bud was bent over a Weinstock-Lubin mail-order
catalogue. He had a sheet of paper half filled with items, and was
licking his pencil and looking for more. He looked up and grinned a
little, and asked Cash when he was going to town again; and added that
he wanted to mail a letter.

"Yeah. Well, the trail's just as good now as it was when I took it,"
Cash hinted strongly. "When I go to town again, it'll be because I've
got to go. And far as I can see, I won't have to go for quite some
time."

So Bud rose before daylight the next morning, tied on the makeshift
snowshoes Cash had contrived, and made the fifteen-mile trip to Alpine
and back before dark. He brought candy for Lovin Child, tended
that young gentleman through a siege of indigestion because of the
indulgence, and waited impatiently until he was fairly certain that
the wardrobe he had ordered had arrived at the post-office. When he had
counted off the two days required for a round trip to Sacramento, and
had added three days for possible delay in filling the order, he went
again, and returned in one of the worst storms of the winter.

But he did not grudge the hardship, for he carried on his back a bulky
bundle of clothes for Lovin Child; enough to last the winter through,
and some to spare; a woman would have laughed at some of the things he
chose: impractical, dainty garments that Bud could not launder properly
to save his life. But there were little really truly overalls, in which
Lovin Child promptly developed a strut that delighted the men and
earned him the title of Old Prospector. And there were little shirts
and stockings and nightgowns and a pair of shoes, and a toy or two that
failed to interest him at all, after the first inspection.

It began to look as though Bud had deliberately resolved upon carrying
a guilty conscience all the rest of his life. He had made absolutely no
effort to trace the parents of Lovin Child when he was in town. On the
contrary he had avoided all casual conversation, for fear some one might
mention the fact that a child had been lost. He had been careful not to
buy anything in the town that would