He laid down his pick, for the sun was just pitching his last lances at the snow-peaks away up yonder above the firs, above the clouds, and night was coming down with steady steps to possess this chasm in the earth. Limber Tim untwisted himself from the sapling as Sandy came up from the mine, twisting his great shaggy beard with his right hand, while he carried his black slouch hat in his left, and the two sauntered on toward their cabin together, while Sandy's great gum boots whetted together as he walked. The "Parson" was in a neighboring cabin when it was announced that the first woman had come to the camp. The intelligence was received in a profound silence. There was a piece of looking-glass tacked up over the fire-place of this cabin. Old Baldy whistled a little air, and walked up to this glass, sidewise, silently, and stood there smoothing down his beard. "Ginger blue!" cried the Parson, at last, bounding up from his bench, and throwing out his arms, as if throwing the words from the ends of his fingers. "Ginger blue! hell-ter-flicker!" And here he danced around the cabin in a terrible state of excitement, to the tune of a string of iron-clad oaths that fell like chain-shot. They called him the Parson, because it was said he could outswear any man in the camp, and that was saying a great deal, wonderful as were his achievements in this line. After the announcement, every one of the ten men there took a look at the little triangular fragment of looking-glass that was tacked up over the fire-place. The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event; but she came too early in the world's history to create much sensation. Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman on earth to-day--in this day of committees, conventions, brass-band receptions, and woman's rights! You imagine a princess had come to camp, a good angel, with song and harps, or, at the least, carpet-bags, and extended crinoline, waterfalls, and false hair, a pack-train of Saratoga trunks, and all the adjuncts of civilization. Not at all. She had secured a cabin, by some accident, very near to that of the boy poet, and settled down there quietly to go to work. Yes, Limber Tim had "seed" her. She had ridden the bell mule of the pack-train down the mountain and into town. He told how the hats went up in the air from in and about the Howling Wilderness, and how the boys had gone up in rows to the broken looking-glass in the new barber-shop, and how some had even polished their bowie-knives on their boots, and sat down and tried to see themselves in the shining blade, and adjust their dress accordingly. In a little time Sandy bent silently over the table in the cabin, and with his sleeves rolled up high on his great hairy arms, and kneaded away at the dough in the gold pan in silence, while Limber Tim wrestled nervously with the frying-pan by the fire. "Is she purty, Limber?" "Purty, Sandy? She's purtier nur a spotted dog."