self, and none other!"

"Giant Tom! Giant Tom! Whom do you mean?" exclaimed Will.

"Just wait a minute and you'll see."

The whistler was now very near, though hidden from sight by the bushes,
and he was trilling forth old airs of home that made the pulses in the
lad's throat beat hard.

"It's Giant Tom. There's no other such in the world," repeated Boyd more
to himself than to Will. "In another minute you'll see him. You can hear
him now brushing past the bushes. Ah, there he is! God bless him!"

The figure of an extraordinary man now came into view. He was not more
than five feet tall, nor was he particularly broad for his height. He
was just the opposite of a giant in size, but there was something about
him that suggested the power of a giant. He had a wonderfully quick and
light step, and it was Will's first impression that he was made of
steel, instead of flesh and blood. His face, shaven smoothly, told
little of his age. He was dressed in weather-beaten brown, rifle on
shoulder, and two mules, loaded with the usual packs and miner's tools,
followed him in single file and with sure step.

Will's heart warmed at once to the little man who continued to whistle
forth a volume of clear song, and whose face was perhaps the happiest he
had ever seen. Boyd stepped suddenly from the shielding brushwood and
extended his hand.

"Tom Bent," he said, "put 'er there!"

"Thar she is," said Giant Tom, placing his palm squarely in Boyd's.

"My young friend, Mr. William Clarke," said the hunter, nodding at the
lad, "and this is Mr. Thomas Bent, better known to me and others as
Giant Tom."

"Glad to meet you, William," said the little man, and ever afterward he
called the boy William. "Anybody that I find with Jim, here, has got on
'im the stamp an' seal o' high approval. I don't ask your name, whar you
come from or why you're here, or whar you're goin', but I take you fur a
frien' o' Jim's, an' so just 'bout all right. Now put 'er thar."

He grinned a wide grin and extended a wide palm, into which Will put his
to have it enclosed at once in a grasp so mighty that he was convinced
his first impression about the man being made of steel was correct. He
uttered an exclamation and Giant Tom dropped his hand at once.

"I never do that to a feller more than once," he said, "an' it's always
the first time I meet him. Even then I don't do it 'less I'm sure he's
all right, an' I'm goin' to like 'im. It's jest my way o' puttin' a