peared around the
shoulder of the hill.

CHAPTER XV

THE GOLD IN BOREALIS

The men to whom the bar-keep told the story of Jim and his start into
the mountains smiled again. The light in their eyes was half of
affection and half of concern. They could not believe the shiftless
old miner would long remain away in the snow and wind, where more than
simple resolution was required to keep a man afoot. They would see him
back before the darkness settled on the world, perhaps with something
in his hand by way of a weed, if not precisely the "Injun" thing he
sought.

But the darkness came and Jim was not at hand. The night and the snow
seemed swirling down together in the gorge, from every lofty uprise of
the hills. It was not so cold as the previous storm, yet it stung with
its biting force.

At six o'clock the blacksmith called at the Dennihans', in some
anxiety. Doc himself threw open the door, in response to the knock.
How small and quiet he appeared, here at home!

"No, he 'ain't showed up," he said of Jim. "I don't know when he'll
come."

Webber reported to the boys.

"Well, mebbe he's gone, after all," said Field.

"He looked kind of funny 'round the eyes when he started," Bone
informed them. "I hope he'll git his stuff," and they wandered down
the street again.

At eight o'clock the bar-keep returned once more to Miss Doc's.

No Jim was there. The sick little foundling was feebly calling in his
baby way for "Bruvver Jim."

The fever had him in its furnace. Restlessly, but now more weakly
weaving, the tiny bit of a man continued as ever to cling to his doll,
which he held to his breast with all that remained of his strength. It
seemed as if his tired baby brain was somehow aware that Jim was gone,
for he begged to have him back in a sweet little way of entreaty,
infinitely sad.

"Bruvver Jim?" he would say, in his questioning little voice--"Bruvver
Jim?" And at last he added, "Bruvver Jim--do--yike--'ittle Nu--thans."

At this Miss Doc felt her heart give a stroke of pain, for something
that was almost divination of things desolate in the little fellow's
short years of babyhood was granted to her woman's understanding.

"Bruvver Jim will come," she said, as she knelt beside the bed. "He'll
come back home to the baby."

But nine o'clock and ten went by, and only the storm outside came down
from the hills to the house.

Hour after hour the lamp was burning in the window as a beaco