a
wonderful softening of the heart. "I was foolin'--just havin' a
joke--the last time you was down to the store. You know you can have
the best we've got in the deck."

"Wal, I 'ain't washed the taste of your joke clean out of my mouth just
yet, so I won't bother you to-day," drawled Jim; and with muttered
curses the gambler left, determined to have that ledge of gold-bearing
rock, let the cost be what it might.

"I guess we'll have to quit on that there Christmas-tree," said the
blacksmith, who was present with others at the cabin. "Seems you
didn't have time to go to the Pinyon hills and fetch one back."

"If only I hadn't puttered 'round with the work on the claim," said
Jim, "we might have had that tree as well as not. But I'll tell you
what we can do. We can cut down the alders and willows at the spring,
and bind a lot together and tie on some branches of mountain-tea and
make a tree. That is, you fellers can, for little Skeezucks ain't
a-feelin' right well to-day, and I reckon I'll stay close beside him
till he spruces up."

"What about your mine?" inquired Lufkins.

"It ain't agoin' to run away," said the old philosopher, calmly. "I'll
let it set there for a few more days, as long as I can't hang it up on
the tree. It's just my little present to the boy, anyhow."

If anything had been needed to inject new enthusiasm into the plans for
a Christmas celebration or to fire anew the boyhood in the men, the
find of gold at Jim's very door would have done the trick a dozen times
over.

With hearts new-created for the simple joys of their labor, the big
rough fellows cut the meagre growth of leafless trees at the spring in
the small ravine, and gathered evergreen mountain-tea that grew in
scrawny clusters here and there on the mountains.

Armful after armful of this, their only possible material, they carried
to the blacksmith's shop below, and there wrought long and hard and
earnestly, tying together the wisps of green and the boughs and trunks
of tender saplings.

Four of the stalks, the size of a lady's wrist, they fastened together
with twisted wire to form the main support, or body, of their tree, To
this the reconstructed, enlarged, and strengthened branches were
likewise wired. Lastly, the long, green spikes of the mountain shrub
were tied on, in bunches, like so many worn-out brooms. The tree, when
completed and standing in its glory in the shop, was a marvellous
creation, fully as much like