At last the Judge rolled in like a little sea on the shore. He had come straight down from the Widow's, had gone up to get the truth of the matter, and had unscrewed Limber Tim from the fence, and made him tell all he knew of the unhappy lady, and how it happened. Then the boys backed the little Judge up against the bar, and stood him there, and read him from top to bottom, as if he had been a bulletin board. "Split his foot clean open, you see! Did it while a choppin' wood in the dark." "Speck he was a lookin' at the Widder when it happened," half laughed a big man with a big mouth, and a voice like a Numidian lion. "The clumsy cuss!" That is what Oregon Jake said after catching his breath over his tumbler of Old Tom. And that is all the sympathy that Sandy got after they found out, as they thought, that he had only split open his foot with an ax. "The clumsy cuss!" CHAPTER XIX. HOW DID IT HAPPEN? The sun at last shot sharply through the far fir tops tossing over the savage and sublime mountain crest away to the east, with its battlement of snow, and Limber Tim was glad at the sight of it, for he was very cold and stiff, and hungry and thirsty, and tired of his post of honor, and disgusted with himself for the miserable mistakes he had made that morning. He had been standing there like a forlorn and lonesome cock all the morning on one foot, waiting for the dawn, and now he fairly wanted to crow at the sight of it. Men came and went now, and every man asked after poor Sandy. Limber Tim now told the same story right straight through, all about how it happened, how Bunker Hill was "kivered" with blood, and all about it, even to the most minute detail; for certainly, thought he to himself, it is Sandy or Sandy would have come out long ago. He even believed it so firmly, that he began to be sorry for Sandy, and to wonder how long it would be till Sandy would be out and about again on crutches. Then he said to himself, it would be at least a month; and then when the next man came by and inquired after Sandy, he told him that in a month Sandy would be about on crutches. At this piece of information Limber Tim felt a great deal better. He said to himself he was very glad it was no worse, and then he screwed his back tighter up to the fence than before, and stood there trying to warm in the cold sunlight of a moist morning in the Sierras. It was like standing on the Apennines, and turning your back and parting your coat tails, and trying to warm by the fires of Vesuvius. In the midst of meditations like these the door opened, and Sandy shuffled through it, shot over the fence, slapped his two great hands on the two shoulders as before, and before Limber Tim could unscrew himself from the fence, cried out-- "Whisky, Limber! whisky, quick! The gals is almost tuckered! Go! Split!" He spun him around and sent him reeling down the trail, then returned and banged the door behind him.