of miners in Caribou. He seemed to have no settled purpose, no special object in life. He did nothing, was nothing; but day by day he grew more closely into the life of the place. No event was complete without him, and the appearance of his round jolly face in any gathering was always the signal for a fusion of cliques and a good time all round. Everyone in Caribou knew his history, who he was, where he came from, why he was here. You were sure to have this information fired at you by the Judge the first time you made his acquaintance.

"Yes, by Gad,' he would begin. 'I have known life-life, sir, I repeat-life in the very heart of the cultured Eastern States. I have had my fling. Gad, boy, it was a royal fling too. Wine, you bet; woman, I should remark; gamble, why you benighted tender foot, they don't know the meaning of the word gamble out here; in our game of poker we played for stakes worth winning; if a man threw the banker a $50 bill, he got one white chip, only half an antee;' and here the Judge would stop and wag his large head from side to side, until it seemed the old-fashioned crush operahat he sported would fall to the ground; across his face all the while played a smile of happy superiority. Busy with the memory of old dissipations, he would forget your presence, and, looking out of the window, whistle softly some air linked in his mind with other days; coming back to the present, he would continue his story. The old man cut up rough at last; my governor, you see, was a high officer in the church, and didn't exactly cotton to my larks. One morning he called me to his study; I did not like his looks; I knew there was trouble coming. "Billy," said he-Billy Woods is my name, you know, I'll be thirty-nine in December; don't look it, do I? well, I am-" Billy," said the old man, “you have developed a surprising talent for profanity. If this was natural or hereditary I might excuse you, but for generations our family have been leaders in religious matters. To speak plainly, William, you raise too much trouble for this small city; it won't do; you overstock the market. I think you had better go West, where the people are educated up to your style. I have the misfortune to own a mine called the 'Sovereign People;' it is situated near Caribou, Colorado. Now I want you to go out to Caribou and stay for two years; I will send you each month two hundred dollars to pay expenses. At the end of two years, if you have learned to behave properly, you may come home again, and I will take you into partnership with me." I tried to move the old man, but it

was no go. So I came out here five years ago and settled in that little cabin on the side of the hill; the one with a small platform running all along the front of it. At first it went kind of slow, then I began to like the boys, and they stopped calling me "Tender foot." In a little while I seemed to forget my Eastern home, and ceased to long for my old companions. The two years of my probation at last came to an end, I was free to go home again, but home seemed right here, all around me, for I had grown to love the boys and the camp. The very mountains that surrounded the little valley on all sides had crept into my heart, and I loved them too. The thought of opening my eyes in the morning and looking out on nothing but brick walls, of having no bright "good morning" from Arapaho Peak yonder, made me shrink with aversion from my old life, my old home-a life and a home that seemed mine no longer. I decided not to go back East, but stay here in Caribou. The old man didn't object, so here you find me at the end of five years, doing nothing, with the peculiar energy I have been famous for ever since I came to Colorado. I hope to stay here until I die. If I am bound in the right direction, then my soul will be saved a climb of over ten thousand feet; and if I have to go down below, the extra time consumed in reaching it will be my gain.'

This little autobiography, always interrupted by two or three adjournments to the bar-room, was sure to end in a cordial invitation to visit his cabin, sample his old Rye whisky, and smoke a pipe of peace.

The Judge's cabin, like its owner, had its peculiarities. It was built on the side of a steep hill; the Judge's town lot, as he put it, being narrow but powerful high. While the back-door elbowed the surrounding rocks with true Western familiarity, the front of the house, perched on a row of pine timbers, lifted its head high in air with natural Eastern reserve and pride of position. The cabin contained two rooms, a small bedroom, and a much larger one, in which the Judge seemed to live. Twice each week it was used as a court-room, the Judge being our only Justice of the Peace. This large room was papered from floor to ceiling with old copies of illustrated papers; they were in all languages and from all lands. An elk head was nailed above the fireplace, and a wonderful collection of stuffed birds and animals were strung around the room, filling completely the space between the point where the papering ended and the roof began. An old

fashioned church pulpit, discarded by the Methodist society when they repaired their chapel, stood in one corner of the room for the use of the Judge on court days; a lot of rough pine boards piled up in a corner made benches for the jury, the witnesses and lawyers. The only evidence of luxury or suggestion of his old home in the East, was a large easy-chair that always stood in front of the window, through which could be seen Arapaho Peak, 15,000 feet high. This was the Judge's favourite corner. Here he would sit by the hour when the days were cold or stormy, smoking his large pipe. He always had a book open before him, but it was noticed he seldom turned the leaves, but with eyes fastened on the snowcovered peak across the valley, sat quietly dreaming the hours away. Of what he thought or dreamed, we, his friends in the camp, could not tell; perhaps we could not have understood his thoughts had we known them; that he loved the old mountain was plain; that he turned to it a far different side of his character from the jolly, good-tempered one known in the camp, we suspected. Perhaps his sorrows, if he had any, and Heaven knows we all have some, were told to his cold and silent friend, 'The Peak.'

Many an afternoon I have looked across the valley from my shaft to the Judge's little cabin, as the sun went down, to see him bid it good night.

If the day was clear, you were sure to see him at this hour pacing up and down the narrow platform in front of his cabin, every few moments stopping to look across the valley where the glory of the sunset rested. At last, striking an attitude Napoleonic in the extreme, with head critically balanced on one side, he would stand and watch the close of the day. Nodding in a familiar way to the sun as it dropped behind the mountain, his every movement seemed to say, 'Very well done to-night, old boy-very well done indeed. I could suggest a few improvements, but what's the good? Everyone is satisfied with the show as you give it, so don't change on my account.'

When the bright colour in the west had faded, and the stars began to cluster around Arapaho Peak and blossom far and wide, he would close his door and come slowly down the narrow path leading from his cabin to the Caribou house, where he took all his meals.

The Caribou house was the centre of social life in camp; political conventions, balls, church meetings, and shooting affairs had each in turn done some little towards making and keeping the house famous. About twenty of us lived there; a dozen more,

sleeping in their own cabins, gathered under its roof three times. a day to eat a little and drink a great deal. We made a queer party, thirty-two men hailing from almost as many different parts of the world-stray bits of wreckage from all round the globe— stranded at last in this out-of-the-way mining camp, nestling in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, ten thousand feet above the sea.

In the morning at the breakfast table, when the dim light filtering in through dirty windows gave to face and figure a strange unreal appearance, they were a rough lot to look upon. Conversation was limited, for each man was busy with thoughts of the day's chances. A poor man now, to-night he might be a millionaire, and, snapping his fingers, turn his back on the camp for ever. This possibility made our speech and action quick and nervous, as if begrudging the few moments required to consume the necessary amount of food. It was at such a time and surrounded by such men the Judge showed to advantage. Leaning back in his chair in spite of the rush, somehow he would find time to work in the thin edge of some good story. We couldn't but stop a moment and laugh, and this laugh seemed to clear the atmosphere, let off our surplus stock of nervous excitement, and establish a good feeling all round the table. But if the Judge was entertaining at breakfast, he waxed positively brilliant in the evening. For it was then our life in camp took on its brightest side.

In the long winter nights we all gathered around the large fireplace in the bar-room; with chairs tilted back, legs crossed and hands clasped behind our heads, we would sit and smoke while the Judge spun yarns. Many of them were old, some were poor, but somehow we never got tired of hearing them. The room was dimly lighted; outside the wind whistled, dashing the snow in passionate gusts against the window-panes. The purring of the wood fire, dropping lower and lower as the evening waned, the shadows above and around us, all seemed to draw our little circle closer and closer together; and the Judge's soft voice seemed just to fit in with the surroundings.

He appeared to have such a child-like belief in all his old stock lies. I suppose they had developed slowly from small, perhaps truthful beginnings, right under his eye to their present size, and, like a father, he was blind to weak points in these children of his imagination.

He was writing a book, he once told us- -a book for children; it was to be called 'The Three Buckets of Blood, or The Bloody Beer

Brewer of Bolivia.' I don't think he ever finished it; even his patient friends at the Caribou house mutinied when the first chapter was read to them. In his stories he was always figuring as a hero in some wonderful love adventure; unfortunately, so it appeared to us, the other fellow' always carried off the girl; but this fact never seemed to trouble the Judge, he married them off without a tremor, and allotted each one a family of from six to sixteen children.

One night Jim Strickland, a miner living down at Nederland Camp, made one of our party around the fire. He listened with interest and apparent pleasure to one of the Judge's old love stories; when it came to an end a disagreeable smile lighted up his ugly face. 'Judge,' he broke out, 'the last time I heard you spin that yarn you only allowed the woman had seven children. I'm sure it was only seven, for I noticed at the time it was just the number of kids I had at home; to-night you say the woman had nine children.'

The Judge turned and looked him squarely in the face: this style of criticism was new. 'When did you hear me tell that story?'

"The night Yankee Jim shot the little chap from Boulder, the one we used to call the "Widder's Mite," 'cause he was the only kid she had.'

'That was about ten months ago, wasn't it?' queried the Judge.

'Yes,' answered Strickland, 'just about.'

'If you hadn't been a bloomen idiot you wouldn't have chipped in with such a simple question. Because you and your sleepy old camp never move, you mustn't imagine my friends. stand still. Got a letter from this dear girl last week. "Twins, born Thursday, both boys." She had decided, long before little stranger arrived, to name it after me, after her worthless old lover, Billy Woods; didn't expect two, so only had one name ready, so she had to split it up, the name, not the babies; called one Billy, the other Woods-clever, wasn't it? clever in the little woman to remember me-nothing small either in the way she did it. Twins-that's handsome, shows she had her heart in it, don't it, boys?'

The next day when Strickland got back to his own camp he is said to have remarked, 'Boys, if this old camp ever gets out of debt and has a surplus, I shall vote to buy an ornamental liar like