Limber Tim scratched his ear as he stumbled over the rocks in the trail, and wound his stiffened legs about the boulders and over the logs on his way to the Howling Wilderness, and was sorely perplexed. "Wal, it ain't Sandy, any way. Ef his big hands have lost any of their grip I don't see it, anyhow." He shrugged his shoulders as he said this to himself, for they still ached from the vice-like grip of the giant. Still Limber Tim was angry, notwithstanding the discovery that his old partner was sound and well, and he lifted the latch with but one resolution, and that was to remain perfectly silent and let his lies take care of themselves. Men crowded around him as he entered and gave his orders. But this bulletin-board was a blank. He had set his lips together and they kept their place. For the first time in his troubled and shaky existence he began to know and to feel the power and the dignity of silence. He knew that every man there thought that he, who stood next to the throne, knew all; and felt dignified by this, and dared even to look a little severe on those who were about to ask him questions. He had crammed a bottle of so-called "Bourbon" in his left boot, and was just pushing into the right a "phial of wrath," when some one in the cabin sighed, "Poor Sandy!" Still Limber Tim went on pushing the phial of wrath into his gum boot as well as he could with his stiffened fingers. Then a man came up sharply out of the crowd, and throwing a big, heavy bag of gold dust, as fat as a pet squirrel, down on the counter, proposed to raise a "puss" for Sandy. This was too much. Limber Tim raised his head, and slipping as fast as he could through the crowd for the door, said, back over his shoulder-- "It ain't Sandy at all. It's Bunker Hill. It's the gals. The gals is almost tuckered." There was the confusion of Babel in the Howling Wilderness. The strange and contradictory accounts that had come down from the Widow's--their shrine, the little log house that to them was as a temple, a city set upon a hill--were anything but satisfactory. The men began to get nervous, and then they began to drink, and then they began to dispute again, and then they began to bet high and recklessly who it was that had cut his foot.