world. She
had been growing up as it had been growing down. The moss was gathering
all over the round, rough logs on the outside, and the weeds and wild
vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the
cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that
forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers
were there--Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, on
penalty of death.

"Drunken, wretched, cracked and crazy old Forty-nine," the camp said,
"he can never build a new cabin, for he can't stay sober long enough to
cut down a tree." And the camp told the ugly truth.

"Why don't Forty-nine build a new cabin?" asked Gar Dosson one day, as
he passed that way, with a string of fish in his hand and a coon on his
back.

"Poor dear Forty-nine's got the shakes so he can't get time. It takes
him all the time to shake, and it takes all his money to buy his ager
medicine. Poor dear old Forty-nine!" and the girl seemed to get a cinder
or something in her eye.*****

As the sun settled low, one afternoon, and cast long, creeping shadows
over the flowery land--shadows that lay upon and crept along the ground,
as if they were weary of the day, and would like to lie there and sleep,
and sleep, forever--the stealthy step of a man was heard approaching the
old cabin. There was something of the tiger in the man's movements, and
it was clear that his mission, whatever it was, was not a mission of
peace.*****

The man stands out in the clearing of the land before the cabin, and
peers right and left up the trail and down the trail, and then leans and
listens. Then he takes a glance back over his shoulder at his companion
and follower, Gar Dosson, and being sure that he too is on the alert and
close on his heels, he steps forward. Again the man leans and listens,
but seeing no signs of life and hearing no sound, he straightens up,
walks close to the cabin, and calls out:

"Hello, the house!" at the same time he looks to the priming of his gun,
and then fixes his eye on the door as it slowly opens. He drops the
breech hastily to the ground as the face of Carrie peers forth.

"Beg pardon, Carrie, my girl! Is it only you miss? Beg pardon--but we
are lookin' for a gentleman--a young gentleman, John Logan."

The man is terribly embarrassed as the girl looks him straight in the
face, and his companion falls back into the woods until almost hidden
from view.

"Well,