To the utter amazement of her brother, Miss Doc not only permitted the big, rough men to track the snow through her house, when they came with their gifts, but she gave them kindly welcome. In her face that day they readily saw some faint, illusive sign of beauty heretofore unnoticed, or perhaps concealed. "He'll come along all right," she told them, with a smile they found to be singularly sweet, "for Jim do seem a comfort to the poor little thing." Old Jim would surely have been glad to believe that he or anything supplied a comfort to the grave little sick man lying so quietly in bed. The miner sat by him all day long, and far into every night, only climbing to his cabin on the hill when necessity drove him away. Then he was back there in the morning by daylight, eager, but cheerful always. The presents were heaped on the floor in sight of the pale little Skeezucks, who clung unfailingly, through it all, to the funny makeshift of a doll that "Bruvver Jim" had placed in his keeping. He appeared not at all to comprehend the meaning of the gifts the men had brought, or to know their purpose. That never a genuinely happy Christmas had brightened his little, mysterious life, Miss Dennihan knew by a swift, keen process of womanly intuition. "I wisht he wasn't so sad," she said, from time to time. "I expect he's maybe pinin'." On the following day there came a change. The little fellow tossed in his bed with a fever that rose with every hour. With eyes now burning bright, he scanned the face of the gray old miner and begged for "Bruvver Jim." "This is Bruvver Jim," the man assured him repeatedly. "What does baby want old Jim to do?" "Bruv-ver--Jim," came the half-sobbed little answer. "Bruv-ver--Jim." Jim took him up and held him fast in his arms. The weary little mind had gone to some tragic baby past. "No-body--wants me--anywhere," he said. The heart in old Jim was breaking. He crooned a hundred tender declarations of his foster-parenthood, of his care, of his wish to be a comfort and a "pard." But something of the fever now had come between the tiny ears and any voice of tenderness. "Bruv-ver--Jim; Bruv-ver--Jim," the little fellow called, time and time again. With the countless remedies which her lore embraced, the almost despairing Miss Doc attempted to allay the rising fever. She made little drinks, she studied all the bottles in her case of simples with unremitting attention. Keno, the always-faithful, was sent to every house in camp, seeking for anything and everything that might be called a medicine. It was all of no avail. By the time another day had dawned little Skeezucks was flaming hot with the fever. He rolled his tiny body in baby delirium, his feeble little call for "Bruvver Jim" endlessly repeated, with his sad little cry that no one wanted him anywhere in the world. In his desperation, Jim was undergoing changes. His face was haggard; his eyes were ablaze with parental anguish.