ly wanted to
crow at the sight of it.

Men came and went now, and every man asked after poor Sandy.

Limber Tim now told the same story right straight through, all about how
it happened, how Bunker Hill was "kivered" with blood, and all about it,
even to the most minute detail; for certainly, thought he to himself, it
is Sandy or Sandy would have come out long ago. He even believed it so
firmly, that he began to be sorry for Sandy, and to wonder how long it
would be till Sandy would be out and about again on crutches. Then he
said to himself, it would be at least a month; and then when the next
man came by and inquired after Sandy, he told him that in a month Sandy
would be about on crutches. At this piece of information Limber Tim felt
a great deal better. He said to himself he was very glad it was no
worse, and then he screwed his back tighter up to the fence than before,
and stood there trying to warm in the cold sunlight of a moist morning
in the Sierras. It was like standing on the Apennines, and turning your
back and parting your coat tails, and trying to warm by the fires of
Vesuvius.

In the midst of meditations like these the door opened, and Sandy
shuffled through it, shot over the fence, slapped his two great hands on
the two shoulders as before, and before Limber Tim could unscrew himself
from the fence, cried out--

"Whisky, Limber! whisky, quick! The gals is almost tuckered! Go! Split!"

He spun him around and sent him reeling down the trail, then returned
and banged the door behind him.

Limber Tim scratched his ear as he stumbled over the rocks in the trail,
and wound his stiffened legs about the boulders and over the logs on
his way to the Howling Wilderness, and was sorely perplexed.

"Wal, it ain't Sandy, any way. Ef his big hands have lost any of their
grip I don't see it, anyhow." He shrugged his shoulders as he said this
to himself, for they still ached from the vice-like grip of the giant.

Still Limber Tim was angry, notwithstanding the discovery that his old
partner was sound and well, and he lifted the latch with but one
resolution, and that was to remain perfectly silent and let his lies
take care of themselves.

Men crowded around him as he entered and gave his orders. But this
bulletin-board was a blank. He had set his lips together and they kept
their place. For the first time in his troubled and shaky existence he
began to know and to feel the power and the dignity of silence. He