“He looked kind of funny ’round the eyes when he started,” Bone informed them.  “I hope he’ll git his stuff,” and they wandered down the street again.

At eight o’clock the bar-keep returned once more to Miss Doc’s.

No Jim was there.  The sick little foundling was feebly calling in his baby way for “Bruvver Jim.”

The fever had him in its furnace.  Restlessly, but now more weakly weaving, the tiny bit of a man continued as ever to cling to his doll, which he held to his breast with all that remained of his strength.  It seemed as if his tired baby brain was somehow aware that Jim was gone, for he begged to have him back in a sweet little way of entreaty, infinitely sad.

“Bruvver Jim?” he would say, in his questioning little voice—­“Bruvver Jim?” And at last he added, “Bruvver Jim—­do—­yike—­’ittle Nu—­thans.”

At this Miss Doc felt her heart give a stroke of pain, for something that was almost divination of things desolate in the little fellow’s short years of babyhood was granted to her woman’s understanding.

“Bruvver Jim will come,” she said, as she knelt beside the bed.  “He’ll come back home to the baby.”

But nine o’clock and ten went by, and only the storm outside came down from the hills to the house.

Hour after hour the lamp was burning in the window as a beacon for the traveller; hour after hour Miss Dennihan watched the fever and the weary little fellow in its toils.  At half-past ten the blacksmith, the carpenter, and Kew came, Tintoretto, the pup, coldly trembling, at their heels.  Jim was not yet back, and the rough men made no concealment of their worry.

“Not home?” said Webber.  “Out in the hills—­in this?”

“You don’t s’pose mebbe he’s lost?” inquired the carpenter.

“No, Jim knows his mountains,” replied the smith, “but any man could fall and break his leg or somethin’.”

“I wisht he’d come,” said Miss Doc.  “I wisht that he was home.”

The three men waited near the house for half an hour more, but in vain.  It was then within an hour of midnight.  Slowly, at last, they turned away, but had gone no more than half a dozen rods when they met the bar-keep, Doc Dennihan, Lufkins the teamster, and four other men of the camp, who were coming to see if Jim had yet returned.

“I thought he mebbe hadn’t come,” said Bone, when Webber gave his report, “but Parky’s goin’ to try to jump his claim at twelve o’clock, and we ain’t goin’ fer to stand it!  Come on down to my saloon fer extry guns and ammunition.  We’re soon goin’ up on the hill to hold the ledge fer Jim and the poor little kid.”

With ominous coupling of the gambler’s name with rough and emphatic language, the ten men marched in a body down the street.

The wind was howling, a door of some deserted shed was dully, incessantly slamming.