Opposition to an army of forty wrathful and determined men would have been but suicide.  Parky nodded when he read the note.  He knew the game was closed.  He sold all his interests in the camp for what they would bring and bought a pair of horses and a carriage.

In groups and pairs his henchmen—­suddenly thrown over by their leader to hustle for themselves—­sneaked away from the town, many of them leaving immediately in their dread of the grim reign of law now come upon the camp.  Parky, for his part, waited in some deliberation, and then drove away with a sneer upon his lips when at last his time was growing uncomfortably short.

Decency had won—­the moral slate of the camp was clean!

CHAPTER XXIII

A DAY OF JOY

There came a day—­never to be forgotten in the annals of Borealis—­when, to the ringing of the bar of steel, Parson Stowe, with his pretty little wife and the three little red-capped youngsters, rode once more into town to make their home with their big, rough friends.

Fifty awkward men of the mines roared lustily with cheering.  Fifty great voices then combined in a sweet, old song that rang through the snow-clad hills: 

  “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
    Lead Thou me on. 
  The night is dark, and I am far from home,
    Lead Thou me on.”

And the first official acts of the wholesome young parson were conducted in the “church” that Bone had given to the town when the happy little Skeezucks was christened “Carson Boone” and the drawling old Jim and the fond Miss Doc were united as man and wife.

“If only I’d known what a heart she’s got, I’d asked her before,” the miner drawled.  “But, boys, it’s never too late to pray for sense.”

The moment of it all, however, which the men would remember till the final call of the trumpet was that in which the three little girls, in their bright-red caps, came in at the door of the Dennihan home.  They would never forget the look on the face of their motherless, quaint little waif as he held forth both his tiny arms to the vision and cried out: 

“Bruvver Jim!”

THE END