The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table with the green cloth, as if in a brown study. The great fire blazed up and snapped as if angry, for but few men gathered about it all that evening. The little brown mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old boots and bacon rinds, and their little teeth ticked and rattled together as if the upper half of the Howling Wilderness had been the shop of a mender of watches. Now and then the man behind the silver faro-box filliped the pack of cards with his fingers, turned up the heels of a jack in the most unexpected sort of way, as if just to keep his hand in, but the mice had it mostly their own way all that night. One by one the men who stood waiting dropped away and out of the line to get their dinners, but still enough stood there the livelong night to pass a message from mouth to mouth with the speed of a telegram into town. Then these men standing there, and those who went away, as to that, fell to thinking of Bunker Hill. Somehow, she had advanced wonderfully in the estimation of all from the moment she had been sent for by the Widow. It was a sort of special dignity that had been conferred. This woman, Bunker Hill, had been knighted by their queen. She had been picked out, and set apart and over and above all the other fallen women of the Forks. Even Limber Tim, who stood there on one leg, with his back screwed tight up against the palings, began to like her overmuch, and to wonder why she also would not make some honest man an honest wife. In fact, many men that night recalled many noble acts on the part of this poor woman, and they almost began to feel ashamed that they had sometimes laughed at her plainness, and promised in their hearts to never do so again. CHAPTER XVII. CAPTAIN TOMMY. There was a gray streak of dawn just breaking through the black tree-tops that tossed above the high, far, deep snow, on the mountain that lifted to the east, as the door opened, and Bunker Hill came forth alone. There were ugly clouds rolling overhead, mixing, marching, and counter-marching, as if preparing for a great battle of the elements. On the west wall of the mountain a wolf howled dolefully to his mate on the opposite crest of the canon. The water tumbled and thundered through the gorge below, and sent up echoes and sounds that were sad and lonesome as the march to the home of the dead. She came out into the gray day, slowly and thoughtfully, her head was down, and when Limber Tim helped her over the fence she was shy and modest, as if she herself had been the Widow. He tried to ask about the Widow, but that awful respect for the other sex that seems born with the American of the Far West, kept him silent; and as Bunker Hill led on rapidly towards town and did not say one word about the sufferer, he followed, as ignorant as any man in camp.