Of a sudden, the crowd before the store was perceptibly agitated.  Its members whispered excitedly one to another, and all their eyes were focussed upon three men approaching from up the trail.  The trio were ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even ragged.  In a more stable community their apprehension by the village constable and arrest for vagrancy would have been immediate.  “French Louis,” the tenderfeet whispered and passed the word along.  “Owns three Eldorado claims in a block,” the man next to Frona confided to her.  “Worth ten millions at the very least.”  French Louis, striding a little in advance of his companions, did not look it.  He had parted company with his hat somewhere along the route, and a frayed silk kerchief was wrapped carelessly about his head.  And for all his ten millions, he carried his own travelling pack on his broad shoulders.  “And that one, the one with the beard, that’s Swiftwater Bill, another of the Eldorado kings.”

“How do you know?” Frona asked, doubtingly.

“Know!” the man exclaimed.  “Know!  Why his picture has been in all the papers for the last six weeks.  See!” He unfolded a newspaper.  “And a pretty good likeness, too.  I’ve looked at it so much I’d know his mug among a thousand.”

“Then who is the third one?” she queried, tacitly accepting him as a fount of authority.

Her informant lifted himself on his toes to see better.  “I don’t know,” he confessed sorrowfully, then tapped the shoulder of the man next to him.  “Who is the lean, smooth-faced one?  The one with the blue shirt and the patch on his knee?”

Just then Frona uttered a glad little cry and darted forward.  “Matt!” she cried.  “Matt McCarthy!”

The man with the patch shook her hand heartily, though he did not know her and distrust was plain in his eyes.

“Oh, you don’t remember me!” she chattered.  “And don’t you dare say you do!  If there weren’t so many looking, I’d hug you, you old bear!

“And so Big Bear went home to the Little Bears,” she recited, solemnly. 
“And the Little Bears were very hungry.  And Big Bear said, ’Guess what
I have got, my children.’  And one Little Bear guessed berries, and one
Little Bear guessed salmon, and t’other Little Bear guessed porcupine. 
Then Big Bear laughed ‘Whoof!  Whoof!’ and said, ’A Nice Big Fat
Man!’”

As he listened, recollection avowed itself in his face, and, when she had finished, his eyes wrinkled up and he laughed a peculiar, laughable silent laugh.

“Sure, an’ it’s well I know ye,” he explained; “but for the life iv me I can’t put me finger on ye.”

She pointed into the store and watched him anxiously.

“Now I have ye!” He drew back and looked her up and down, and his expression changed to disappointment.  “It cuddent be.  I mistook ye.  Ye cud niver a-lived in that shanty,” thrusting a thumb in the direction of the store.