ht have been a feeling of
disappointment or displeasure on the part of the men standing waiting,
waiting for an opportunity to be of the least possible service, as they
saw Bunker Hill leave town to return with Limber Tim, but it had no
expression.

The man who sat behind the silver faro-box no doubt felt this
disappointment the keenest of any one.

When we feel displeased or disappointed at any thing, we are always
saying that that is about the best that could be done. "What else could
she do? The woman's ill; the Widder is sick. She sends for a woman, a
bad woman, p'raps, but the best we got. Well, a woman's better as a man,
any ways you puts it. What else could she do? A bad woman's better as a
good man. What else could she do? I puts it to you, what else could she
do?"

The crowd at the Howling Wilderness was satisfied. But the men stood
there or sat in knots around the bar-room in silence. The crimson-headed
bar-keeper had not seen such a dull day of it since they had the double
funeral. What could be the matter? Men made all kinds of guesses, but
somehow no one hinted that the little woman was mad.

The Roaring Whirlpool, as the Howling Wilderness was sometimes called,
drew in but few victims all that night. Men kept away, kept going out
and looking up toward the little cabin on the hill.

The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table with the green cloth,
as if in a brown study. The great fire blazed up and snapped as if
angry, for but few men gathered about it all that evening. The little
brown mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old boots and
bacon rinds, and their little teeth ticked and rattled together as if
the upper half of the Howling Wilderness had been the shop of a mender
of watches. Now and then the man behind the silver faro-box filliped the
pack of cards with his fingers, turned up the heels of a jack in the
most unexpected sort of way, as if just to keep his hand in, but the
mice had it mostly their own way all that night.

One by one the men who stood waiting dropped away and out of the line to
get their dinners, but still enough stood there the livelong night to
pass a message from mouth to mouth with the speed of a telegram into
town.

Then these men standing there, and those who went away, as to that, fell
to thinking of Bunker Hill. Somehow, she had advanced wonderfully in the
estimation of all from the moment she had been sent for by the Widow. It
was a sort of spe