“Bruv-ver—­Jim,” he begged.  “Bruv-ver—­Jim.”

Then, at last, the gray old miner understood the whole significance of the baby words.  “Bruvver Jim” meant more than just himself; it meant the three little girls—­associates—­children—­all that is dear to a childish heart—­all that is indispensable to baby happiness—­all that a lonely little heart must have or starve.

Jim groaned, for the utmost he could do was done when he took the sobbing little fellow in his arms and murmured him words of comfort as he carried him up and down the room.

The day that followed, and the day after that, served only to deepen the longing in the childish breast.  The worried men of Borealis played on the floor in desperation.  They fashioned new wagons, sleds, and dolls; they exhausted every device their natures prompted; but beyond a sad little smile and the call for “Bruvver Jim” they received no answer from the baby heart,

At the end of a week the little fellow smiled no more, not even in his faint, sweet way of yearning.  His heart was starving; his grave, baby thought was far away, with the small red caps and the laughing voices of children.

The fond Miss Doc and the gray old Jim alone knew what the end must be, inevitably, unless some change should speedily come to pass.

Meantime, Keno had quietly opened up a mighty ledge of gold-bearing ore on the hill.  It lay between walls of slate and granite.  Its hugeness was assured.  That the camp would boom in the spring was foreordained.  And that ledge all belonged to Jim.  But he heard them excitedly tell what the find would do for him and the camp as one in a dream.  He could not care while his tiny waif was starving in his lonely little way.

“Boys,” he said at last, one night, when the smith and Bone had called to see the tiny man, who had sadly gone to sleep—­“boys, he’s pinin’.  He’s goin’ to die if he don’t have little kids for company.  I’ve made up my mind.  I’m goin’ to take him to Fremont right away.”

Miss Doc, who was knitting a tiny pair of mittens and planning a tiny red cap and woollen leggings, dropped a stitch and lost a shade of color from her face.

“Ain’t there no other way?” inquired the blacksmith, a poignant regret already at his heart.  “You don’t really think he’d up and die?”

“Children have got to be happy,” Jim replied.  “If they don’t get their fun when they’re little, why, when is it ever goin’ to come?  I know he’ll die, all alone with us old cusses, and I ain’t a-goin’ to wait.”

“But the claim is goin’ to be a fortune,” said Bone.  “Couldn’t you hold on jest a week or two and see if he won’t get over thinkin’ ’bout the little gals?”

“If I kept him here and he died, like that—­just pinin’ away for other little kids—­I couldn’t look fortune in the face,” answered Jim, to which, in a moment, he added, slowly, “Boys, he’s more to me than all the claims in Nevada.”