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--{ TO CARIBOO AND BACK }+-

the pan, and very savory it smelled as it frizzled
over the fire. There was a small miner’s stove
in one corner, enough to make the place cozily
warm. Arthur revived visibly, and as they
ate their dinner the boys listened to the miner’s
hard luck story with much interest. He told it
in a casual half-joking way that did not agree
with the grim, desperate look that never once
left his face. :

“T’ve come to the end of a long lane now,”
he concluded, ‘‘and there’s no turning in sight.
Guess it’s time for me to quit. If you fellows
hadn’t come just when you did—well, somebody
would have come along in the spring I guess
and found my bones, if the coyotes had left
any!’ He laughed almost gayly and his list-
eners hardly knew if he meant the grisly sug-
gestion for a jest or not.

“Have you got a mine here?” asked Arthur.

“Well, a kind of mine, just placer. There’s
a small creek runs near—the snow all but hides
it now—and I’ve been washing the dirt and
getting a little, till I got sick and had to stop.”

Both boys were tremendously taken with
this poverty-stricken miner who talked so
gamely and, as they sat around the little stove,

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