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My heart was full of bitterness and revenge. As we crossed the crest of the little brown hill that looks above the town, I half turned in my saddle and shook a thin and nervous hand against its cold and cruel inhabitants.

I never entered that town again, save as an enemy, for more than a decade.

At dusk we came upon the camp of the expedi tion, noisy and boisterous, half buried in the snow.

This was the rudest set of men I ever saw gathered together for any purpose whatever. There were, perhaps, a dozen good men, as good as there were in the land ; but the rank and file were made up of thieves, bar-roorn loafers, gutter snipes, and men of desperate character and fortunes. They growled and grumbled and fought half the time.

We travelled by night, drawing the supplies on slides, in order to get the horses over the snow when it was hard and frozen. I had told them the story of my dangerous descent into the valley, but was not believed by half the company. They could not understand what upon earth a man could mean by such a hazard. They were practical fellows. They put everything on the popular conceived basis of the age. They could not see what interest I had in going there, could not see " what I could make by it." They did not see where I could make it " pay."

One day I woke up to a strange sensation. More than once I had heard some talk about " a man