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"A MAN FOE BREAKFAST." 137

yet he seemed to be terribly so. The assassins were active in getting evidence out of the way, making friends with the Judge, and intimidating all who dared express sympathy with the Indians. The miners, with the exception of Sandy, were rather in different. They knew very well that this weak little egotist would only make a farce of the affair, even though he had capacity to enter a legal com mittal. The giant Sandy, however, held his own against all the town and promised a lively time.

The Indian boy came home that night beaming with delight. His black eyes flashed like the eyes of a cat in the dark. I had thought him incapable of excitement. He had always seemed so passive and sullen that we had come to believe he had no life or passion in him.

He talked to Paquita eagerly, and made all kinds of gestures ; put his fingers about his neck, stabbed himself with an imaginary knife, threw himself to wards the fire, and shot with an imaginary gun at an imaginary prisoner. Would he be hung, stabbed, burnt or shot? The boy was so eager and excited, that once or twice he broke out into pretty fair English at some length, the first I had ever heard him utter.

The Doctor, as I said, was unpopular. In fact r doctors usually are in the mines. Whether this is because nine-tenths of those who are there are frauds and impostors, or whether it is because miners give open expression to a natural dislike that all men feel for the man to whose ministry we all have to