Next afternoon the Marquise bade her little brood a tearful good-by and rode with her lover up Happy Valley to go over the mountain, on to the railroad, and back into the world. At the mouth of Wolf Run Pleasant Trouble was waiting to shake hands. "Tell Polly good-by for me, Pleasant," said Miss Holden. "She wasn't there." "Polly and the soldier boy rid up to the Leetle Jedge o' Happy Valley last night to git married." "Oh," said Miss Holden, and she flushed a little. "And Ham and King weren't there--where do you suppose they are?" Pleasant pointed to a green little hollow high up a ravine. "They're up thar." "Alone?" Pleasant nodded and Miss Holden looked anxious. "They aren't fighting again?" "Oh, no!" "Do you suppose they are _really_ friends now?" "Ham an' King air as lovin' as a pair o' twins," said Pleasant decidedly and Miss Holden looked much pleased. "What on earth are they doing up there?" "Well," drawled Pleasant, "when they ain't huggin' an' shakin' hands they're wrasslin' with a jug o' moonshine." The Mission girl looked disturbed, and the merry stranger let loose his ringing laugh. "Oh, dear! Now, where do you suppose they got moonshine?" "I tol' you," repeated Pleasant, "that I didn't know nobody who couldn't git moonshine." Miss Holden sighed, her lover laughed again, and they rode away, Pleasant watching them till they were out of sight. "Whut I aimed to say was," corrected Pleasant mentally, "I didn't know nobody who _knowed me_ that couldn't git it." And he jingled the coins in his pockets that at daybreak that morning had been in the pockets of Ham and King. HIS LAST CHRISTMAS GIFT The sergeant got the wounded man to his feet and threw one arm around his waist. Then he all but carried him, stumbling along, with both hands clasped across his eyes, down the ravine that looked at night like some pit of hell. For along their path a thousand coke-ovens spat forth red tongues that licked northward with the wind, shot red arrows into the choking black smoke that surged up the mountainside, and lighted with fire the bellies of the clouds rolling overhead. "Whar you takin' me?" "Hospital." The mountainer stopped suddenly. "Why, I can't see them ovens!" "You come on, Jim." Next morning Jim lay on a cot with a sheet drawn to his chin and a grayish, yellow bandage covering forehead and eyes down to the tip of his nose. When the surgeon lifted that bandage the nurse turned her face aside, and what was under it, or rather what was not under it, shall not be told. Only out in the operating-room the smooth-faced young assistant was curiously counting over some round leaden pellets, and he gave one low whistle when he pushed into a pile a full fourscore. "He said he was a-lookin' through a keyhole," the sergeant reported, "an' somebody let him have it with both barrels--but that don't go. Jim wouldn't be lookin' through no keyhole; he'd bust the door down."