"dug-out" was more like an Indian kik-willy (ancient Indian house) than the dwelling of a modern Anglo-Saxon. The walls were composed of the rough timbers, and the chinks were stuffed with rags and old newspapers. A few smoke-begrimed pictures were hanging on the walls, and a calendar of the year 1881 still glared forth in all its ancient uselessness, leading one back into a past decade. If he broke the rules of etiquette by eating with his knife, he also smashed those of modesty by utilizing his air-tight heater as a cuspidor, for it was streaked white with evaporated saliva.

How this crude bud ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. His bed consisted of, first, boards, then straw, then sacking; and it had remained so long without being frayed out that it had become packed as hard as terra firma. His blankets had not seen the light of day, nor enjoyed the fresh cool breezes for many long years. His one window was opaque with the smoke of many years' accumulation. Although his chickens had a coop of their own where they roosted at night, they ran about the floor of his "dug-out" in the daytime looking for crumbs that fell from the poor man's table; and his cat, through years of criminal impunity, would sit on the table at mealtime and help himself to the victuals just as the spirit moved him. A stump had been left standing when the cabin was built; it had been hewn at the appropriate elevation of a chair. This was near his air-tight heater, and his favorite position was to sit there with his feet propped against the stove and smoke by candle-light; and sometimes he would sit in the dark to save candles. His other furniture consisted of "Reindeer" brand condensed milk and blue-mottled soap boxes, which he had acquired at times from F.W. Foster's general store at Clinton.

Hard Times Hance was living on first principles; but then, if a man wishes to save any coin in this world he must make great personal sacrifices; and so he was perfectly happy in his temporary aboriginal condition. There were no restrictions upon him. He was even outside the circumference of any ministerial jurisdiction, and had never been cautioned about the hereafter. Like an Indian, he moved just as the impulse seized him. How this man expected to submit to the personal restrictions and embargoes imposed by modern fashions and society was known only to himself. The song of the forest had been his only concert; the whisper of the creek his sole heart companion. When occasion permitted he would wander the entire day on the high mountains, at the end of his trail, hunting for game, and little caring whether he found it or not, so long as he had the wild and congenial environs to admire and embrace. What was city life in comparison with this?

At last the day arrived when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent to leaving this earth and taking up his abode in Mars. He must sacrifice his love for the creek and the trail. He must renounce his freedom and go into social slavery. It was the emerging from the woods into the prairie; the coming from darkness into the light; a resurrection from the dead. In future he must tread the smooth cement walk between cultivated lawns and plants, instead of climbing the rude, uneven trail obstructed by fallen trees and surrounded with vegetation in its wildest and most primeval forms. He would walk the polished mahogany floor with patent boots, instead of the terrestrial one of his dug-out with obsolete overshoes.

But it must be. For years he had been preparing and planning. The object of his past had been a preparation for a better future; and why not? Others enjoyed the good things of this life, and why not he? Had he not paid the price. Others reaped where they had not sown; he had sown, yes, sown in persecution, now he would reap in envious joy. He had lived the first half of his life in squalor and darkness, that the latter half might be clean and cheerful. When he had set out in his young days to live his pre-arranged history it was with an ambition to be wealthy, no matter by what means it should be acquired, so long as it was honest. Now he was wealthy. He had been poor; now he was rich, and money would put the world at his feet, which henceforth had been over his head. He had been an animal; from now on he would be human.

But in his enthusiasm of development he forgot that he had grown attached to the wild, aboriginal life; that the parting might snap thongs and inflict wounds which even time would not mend or cure. At times the creek would sing, and the trail would speak, but he banished the tempters from his mind to make room for his illuminating prospects, and his wings continued to grow towards maturity. He struggled and freed himself from the cocoon. He went to Vancouver a caterpillar and returned a butterfly, and the earthquake which accompanied his debut was equal to that which destroyed San Francisco. He had sold his farm, which included the creek, and the trail, and the dug-out, and his salt pork barrel, for a song, and with his coin and icties about him, and in his lately acquired form, he invaded Clinton with an accentuated front. The street was lined with people as though a procession had been going by—all the sweet and familiar sounds and sights had been sacrificed criminally, and he was on his way to sip honey from flower to flower.

He sounded about Clinton for some time for a suitable anchorage on which to materialize the plans and specifications of his mansion, but he did not drive a stake, because Clinton was very much inferior to his "class" ideal; it had no electric light, and no water system. So he migrated south to Ashcroft, and there he pre-empted a large lot and made arrangements for the foundation of his castle. Out of the ground in a short period arose one of the most up-to-date bungalows. While the building was in course of construction Hard Times Hance, who had repudiated this headline, moved about in his dress suit, stiff hat, silk gloves, and a cane, and gave such orders to the contractor as he saw fit. He was looked upon as the most remarkable freak that had ever invaded the dry belt. And he sprang into society spontaneously. The people clamored for him. Progressive socials were arranged in his honor at all the leading social centres in their eagerness to cultivate his society. Some had faint recollections of having seen him at times, others claimed to have heard of him at his hermitage, but they all pretended to have known him personally and thoroughly, and many even suspected that he possessed more, intrinsically, than he had revealed superficially. He was the lion of the hour, and he did not forget to hand around the coin in his efforts to retain the position which he had secured.

When his mansion was turned over by the contractor, and had been accepted by the architect, he issued invitations to one of the most magnificent social functions which had ever erupted at Ashcroft. Those who were invited were flattered, and those who were not called were grossly insulted and wondered what disqualified them. They danced the