the trade in this damn Valley."

"Who told you about she-devil, Sol?" asked Phil curiously.

"Oh, somebody! He not speak very much but he say plenty when he be
good and ready. He watch round corner. Brenchfield make she-devil
wild. You speak to her and she get quiet."

"It wasn't Jim Langford who told you, Sol?"

"Langford,--no! Langford's mouth all stitched up. He say nothing at
all. You wait!"

Sol put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

In a second, the half-witted, ragamuffin Smiler bobbed his grinning
face round the door post. Hanson waved him in and when the youngster
saw that only Sol Hanson and Phil were inside he raced round and round
Phil in sheer delight, like a puppy-dog round its master. He rubbed
his hand up and down Phil's clothes, and he kept pointing to himself
and to Phil. Phil could not make out his meaning.

"He says you and him good pals," interpreted Hanson.

"You bet we are, Smiler!" said Phil, patting the boy's matted hair.

"Smiler and me make a deal. We going to live together after this,"
said Sol. "Smiler he got nobody. Smiler hungry most all the time;
dirty, no place to sleep; just a little mongrel-pup. I got lots of
grub, nice shack, good beds. Smiler get lots of bath. Smiler and me we
going to be pals. What you say, Smiler?"

The boy grinned again and gurgled in happy acquiescence.

"But the kid can't talk?"

"Oh, he talk all right; you bet! He talk with his head, and his eyes,
his feet and his hands; talk every old way only you don't savvy his
kind of talk."

As soon as work was over, Phil hurried up the hill home. He had had a
trying day of it one way and another and he was longing for a
refreshing bath and a clean-up.

He popped his head into Langford's room, but Langford either had not
come or had been in early and had gone out again.

Whistling softly, he went into his own. His whistle ended abruptly,
for his bedroom looked as if it had been struck by a cyclone.
Everywhere, in wild confusion, lay shirts, collars and clothes; books,
papers and personal belongings. The drawers of his bureau were pulled
out and the contents scattered. Someone evidently had been in on a
thieves' hunt and had been neither leisurely nor nice about the job.

Phil could not, for the life of him, imagine why anyone would want
specially to ransack his of all the choice of rooms at Mrs. Clunie's.
He had nothing worth stealing, while many of his landlady's boarders
were fairly well endowed