rom time to time. "I expect
he's maybe pinin'."

On the following day there came a change. The little fellow tossed in
his bed with a fever that rose with every hour. With eyes now burning
bright, he scanned the face of the gray old miner and begged for
"Bruvver Jim."

"This is Bruvver Jim," the man assured him repeatedly. "What does baby
want old Jim to do?"

"Bruv-ver--Jim," came the half-sobbed little answer. "Bruv-ver--Jim."

Jim took him up and held him fast in his arms. The weary little mind
had gone to some tragic baby past.

"No-body--wants me--anywhere," he said.

The heart in old Jim was breaking. He crooned a hundred tender
declarations of his foster-parenthood, of his care, of his wish to be a
comfort and a "pard."

But something of the fever now had come between the tiny ears and any
voice of tenderness.

"Bruv-ver--Jim; Bruv-ver--Jim," the little fellow called, time and time
again.

With the countless remedies which her lore embraced, the almost
despairing Miss Doc attempted to allay the rising fever. She made
little drinks, she studied all the bottles in her case of simples with
unremitting attention.

Keno, the always-faithful, was sent to every house in camp, seeking for
anything and everything that might be called a medicine. It was all of
no avail. By the time another day had dawned little Skeezucks was
flaming hot with the fever. He rolled his tiny body in baby delirium,
his feeble little call for "Bruvver Jim" endlessly repeated, with his
sad little cry that no one wanted him anywhere in the world.

In his desperation, Jim was undergoing changes. His face was haggard;
his eyes were ablaze with parental anguish.

"I know a shrub the Injuns sometimes use for fever," he said to Miss
Doc, at last, when he suddenly thought of the aboriginal medicine. "It
grows in the mountains. Perhaps it would do him good."

"I don't know," she answered, at the end of her resources, and she
clasped her hands. "I don't know."

"If only I can git a horse," said Jim, "I might be able to find the
shrub."

He waited, however, by the side of the moaning little pilgrim.

Then, half an hour later, Bone, the bar-keep, came up to see him, in
haste and excitement. They stood outside, where the visitor had called
him for a talk.

"Jim," said Bone, "you're in fer trouble. Parky is goin' to jump your
claim to-night--it bein' New Year's eve, you know--at twelve o'clock.
He told me so himself.