ll of sickness, and looked and
looked at the curtains and all things as sick people will all the time
look and look when they lie there and can do nothing else, you would at
last have noticed that these coarse but snowy curtains had been made of
as many pieces as Jacob's coat. And lying there and looking and looking,
you would have at last in the course of time read there in one of the
many cloudy spots, these words stamped in bended rows of fantastic
letters:

SELF-RISING FLOUR
WARRANTED SUPERFINE.
50 LBS.

There was a little cracked piece of looking-glass on the wall, no bigger
than your palm. It was fastened on the wall, over, perhaps, the only
illustrated paper that had ever found its way to the Forks. There were
little rosettes around this little glass that had been made from leaves
of every color by the cunning hand of the Widow. There were great
maple-leaves, and leaves of many trees in all the hues of Summer, hung
up here and there, sewn together, and made to make the little bed-room
beautiful. And what a treasure the little glass was! It seemed to be the
great little center of the house. All things rallied, or seemed to be
trying to rally, around it. To be sure, the Widow was not at all plain.

Plain! to Sandy she was the center of the world. The rising and the
setting of the sun.

The carpet had been finished by the same cunning hand. This had been
made of gunny bags sewn together with twine; and under this carpet there
was a thick coat of fine fir-boughs that left the room all the time
sweet and warm, and fragrant as a forest in the Spring. There were
little three-legged benches waiting about in the corners; but by the
bedside sat the great work of art in the camp, a rocking-chair made of
elk horns. This was the gift of a rejected but generous lover.

On the little wooden mantel-piece above the fire-place there stood a row
of nuggets. They lay there as if they were a sort of Winter fruit put by
to ripen. They were like oranges which you see lying about the peasants'
houses in Italy, and almost as large. These were the gifts of the hardy
miners of the Forks to their patron saint; gifts given at such times and
in such ways that they could not be well refused.

Once there had been, late in the night, a heavy stone thrown against the
door, while the two "turtle doves," as the camp used to call its lovers,
sat by the fire.

In less than a second Sandy's pistol stuck its nose out like a little