brought them down with a bang, stretched his arms above his head, and said with a yawn, addressing the pots of geraniums on the window sill, "Them as likes jail-birds can have jail-birds," and lounged out of the room, followed by the citizen in butternut. It was apparent that the supper hour of the group had arrived. It was equally evident that the hospitality of the fireside did not extend to the table.

"You heard that fellow, didn't you?" said the landlord, turning to me after a moment's pause. "You'd think to hear him talk there warn't nobody honest 'round here but him. That's Chris Rankin—he keeps a rum mill up to the Forks and sells tanglefoot and groceries to the miners. By Sunday mornin' he's got 'bout every cent they've earned. There ain't a woman in the settlement wouldn't be glad if somebody would break his head. I'd rather be Dick Sands than him. Dick never drank a drop in his life, and won't let nobody else if he can help it. That's what that slouch hates him for, and that's what he hates me for."

The landlord spoke with some feeling—so much so that I squared my chair and faced him to listen the better. His last remark, too, explained a sign tacked over the desk reading, "No liquors sold here," and which had struck me as unusual when I entered.

"What was this man's crime?" I asked. "There seems to be some difference of opinion about him."

"His crime, neighbor, was because there was a lot of fellers that didn't have no common sense—that's what his crime was. I've known Dick since he was knee-high to a barrel o' taters, and there warn't no better"——

"But he was sent up the second time," I interrupted, glancing at my watch. "So the driver said." I had not the slightest interest in Mr. Richard Sands, his crimes or misfortunes.

"Yes, and they'd sent him up the third time if Judge Polk had lived. The first time it was a pocket-book and three dollars, and the second time it was a ham. Polk did that. Polk's dead now. God help him if he'd been alive when Dick got out the last time. First question he asked me after I told him his mother was all right was whether 'twas true Polk was dead. When I told him he was he didn't say nothin' at first—just looked down on the floor and then he said slow-like:—

"'If Polk had had any common sense, Uncle Jimmy,'—he always calls me 'Uncle Jimmy,'—'he'd saved himself a heap o' worry and me a good deal o' sufferin'. I'm glad he's dead.'"

II

he driver arrived on the minute, backed up to the sprawling wooden steps, and kicked open the door of the waiting-room with his foot.

"All right, boss, I got two passengers 'stead o' one, but you won't kick, I know. You git in; I'll go for the mail." The promotion and the confidential tone were intended as a compliment.

I slipped into my fur overcoat; slid my manuscript into the outside pocket, and followed the driver out into the cold night. The only light visible came from a smoky kerosene lamp boxed in at the far end of the stage and protected by a pane of glass labeled in red paint, "Fare, ten cents."

Close to its rays sat a man, and close to the man—so close that I mistook her for an overcoat thrown over his arm—cuddled a little girl, the light of the lamp falling directly on her face. She was about ten years of age, and wore a cheap woolen hood tied close to her face, and a red shawl crossed over her chest and knotted behind her back. Her hair was yellow and weather-burned, as if she had played out of doors all her life; her eyes were pale blue, and her face freckled. Neither she nor the man made any answer to my salutation.

The child looked up into the man's face and shrugged her shoulders with a slight shiver. The man drew her closer to him, as if to warm her the better, and felt her chapped red hands. In the movement his face came into view. He was, perhaps, thirty years of age—wiry and well built, with an oval face ending in a pointed Vandyke beard; piercing brown eyes, finely chiseled nose, and a well-modeled mouth over which drooped a blond mustache. He was dressed in a dark blue flannel shirt, with loose sailor collar tied with a red 'kerchief, and a black, stiff-brimmed army-shaped hat a little drawn down over his eyes. Buttoned over his chest was a heavy waistcoat made of a white and gray deerskin, with the hair on the outside. His trousers, which fitted snugly his slender, shapely legs, were tucked into his boots. He wore no coat, despite the cold.

A typical young westerner, I said to myself—one of the bone and sinew of the land—accustomed to live anywhere in these mountains—cold proof, of course, or he'd wear a coat on a night like this. Taking his little sister home, I suppose. The country will never go to the dogs as long as we have these young fellows to fall back upon. Then my eyes rested with pleasure on the pointed beard, the peculiar curve of the hat-brim, the slender waist corrugating the soft fur of the deerskin waistcoat, and the peculiar set of his trousers and boots—like those of an Austrian on parade. And how picturesque, I thought. What an admirable costume for the ideal cowboy or the romantic mountain ranger who comes in at the nick of time to save the young maiden; and what a hit the favorite of the footlights would make if he could train his physique down to such wire-drawn, alert, panther-like outlines and—

A heavy object struck the boot of the stage and interrupted my meditations. It was the mail-bag. The next instant the driver's head was thrust in the door.

"Dick, this is the man I told you was goin' 'long far as Bingville. He's got a show up to the college."

I started, hardly believing my ears. Shades of D'Artagnan, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone! Could this lithe, well-knit, brown-eyed young Robin Hood be a convict?

"Are you Dick Sands?" I faltered out.

"Yes, that's what they call me when I'm out of jail. When I'm in I'm known as One Hundred and Two."

He spoke calmly, quite as if I had asked him his age—the voice clear and low, with a certain cadence that surprised me all the more. His answer, too, convinced me that the driver had told him of my time-honored views on solitary confinement, and that it had disposed him to be more or less frank toward me. If he expected, however, any further outburst of sympathy from me he was disappointed. The surprise had been so great, and the impression he had made upon me so favorable, that it would have been impossible for me to remind him even in the remotest way of his former misfortunes.

The child looked at me with her pale eyes, and crept still closer, holding on to the man's arm, steadying herself as the stage bumped over the crossings.

For some minutes I kept still, my topics of conversation especially adapted to convicts being limited. Despite my implied boasting to the driver, I had never, to my knowledge, met one before. Then, again, I had not yet adjusted my mind to the fact that the man before me had ever worn stripes. So I said, aimlessly:—

"Is that your little sister?"

"No, I haven't got any little sister," still in the same calm voice. "This is Ben Mulford's girl; she lives next to me, and I am taking her down for the ride. She's coming back."

The child's hand stole along the man's knee, found his fingers and held on. I kept silence for a while, wondering what I would say next. I felt that to a certain extent I was this man's guest, and therefore under obligation to preserve the amenities. I began again:—

"The driver tells me your mother's sick?"

"Yes, she is. She went over to her sister's last week and got cold. She isn't what she was—I being away from her so much lately. I got two terms; last time for five years. Every little thing now knocks her out."

He raised his head and looked at me calmly—all over—examining each detail,—my derby hat, white tie, fur