ut, and fell asleep while waiting for his partner.

Morning came, but no Tarpaulin; dinner-time arrived, but Jim ate alone,
and was rather blue. He loved a sociable chat, and of late Tarpaulin had
been almost his sole companion.

Evening came, but Tarpaulin came not.

Jim couldn't abide the saloon for a whole evening, so he lit a candle in
his own hut, and attempted to read.

Tarpaulin was a lover of newspapers--it seemed to Jim he received more
papers than all the remaining miners put together.

Jim thought he would read some of these same papers, and unrolled
Tarpaulin's blankets to find them, when out fell a picture-case, opening
as it fell. Jim was about to close it again, when he suddenly started,
and exclaimed:

"Millicent Botayne!"

He held it under the light, and examined it closely.

There could be no doubt as to identity--there were the same exquisite
features which, a few months before, had opened to Jim Hockson a new
world of beauty, and had then, with a sweet yet sad smile, knocked down
all his fair castles, and destroyed all his exquisite pictures.

Strange that it should appear to him now, and so unexpectedly, but
stranger did it seem to Jim that on the opposite side of the case should
be a portrait which was a duplicate of the one shown by the detectives!

"That rascal Brown!" exclaimed Jim. "So he succeeded in getting her, did
he? But I shouldn't call him names; he had as much right to make love to
her as I. God grant he may make her happy! And he is probably a very
fine fellow--_must_ be, by his looks."

Suddenly Jim started, as if shocked by an electric battery. Hiding all
the hair and beard of the portrait, he stared at it a moment, and
exclaimed:

"_Tarpaulin_!"

III.

"Both gone!" exclaimed Colonel Two, hurrying into the saloon, at noon.

"_Both_ gone?" echoed two or three men.

"Yes," said the colonel; "and the queerest thing is, they left
ev'rything behind--every darned thing! I never _did_ see such a stampede
afore--I didn't! Nobody's got any idee of whar they be, nor what it's
'bout neither."

"Don't be _too_ sartain, colonel!" piped Weasel, a self-contained mite
of a fellow, who was still at work upon his glass, filled at the last
general treat, although every one else had finished so long ago that
they were growing thirsty again--"don't be _too_ sartain. Them
detectives bunked at my shanty last night."

"The deuce they did!" cried the colonel. "Good the rest of us did