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." "But--you'll bring him back in the spring, of course?" said the blacksmith, with a worried look about his eyes. "We'd miss him, Jim, almost as much as you." "By that time," supplemented Bone, "the camp's agoin' to be boomin'. Probably we'll have lots of wimmen and kids and schools and everything, fer the gold up yonder is goin' to make Borealis some consid'rable shakes." "I'll bring him back in the spring, all right," said the miner; "but none of you boys would want to see me keep him here and have him die." Miss Doc had been a silent listener to all their conversation. She was knitting again, with doubled speed. "Jim, how you goin'?" she now inquired. "I want to get a horse," answered Jim. "We could ride there horseback quicker than any other way. If only I can get the horse." "It may be stormin' in the mornin'," Webber suggested. "A few clouds is comin' up from the West. What about the horse, Jim, if it starts to snow?"