The wooing of Miss Woppit pursued the even tenor of its curious triple way. Wars and rumors of wars served merely to imbue it with certain heroic fervor. Jake Dodsley's contributions to the "Leadville Herald" and to Henry Feldwisch's Denver "Inter-Ocean," though still aimed at the virgin mistress of The Bower, were pitched in a more exalted key and breathed a spirit that defied all human dangers. What though death confronted the poet and the brutal malice of nocturnal marauders threatened the object of his adoration, what, short of superhuman intervention, should prevent the poet from baffling all hostile environments and placing the queen of his heart securely upon his throne beside him, etc., etc.? We all know how the poets go it when they once get started. The Magpie Glen affair gave Jake Dodsley a new impulse, and marked copies of his wonderful effusions found their way to the Woppit cabin in amazing plenty and with exceeding frequency. In a moment of vindictive bitterness was Barber Sam heard to intimate that the robbery was particularly to be regretted for having served to open the sluices of Jake Dodsley's poetic soul. 'T was the purest comedy, this wooing was; through it all the finger of fate traced a deep line of pathos. The poetic Dodsley, with his inexhaustible fund of rhyme, of optimism and of subtlety; Barber Sam, with his envy, his jealousy, and his garrulity; Three-fingered Hoover with his manly yearning, timorousness, tenderness, and awkwardness--these three in a seemingly vain quest of love reciprocated; the girl, fair, lonely, dutiful--filled with devotion to her brother and striving, amid it all, to preserve a proper womanly neutrality toward these other men; there was in this little comedy among those distant hills so much of real pathos. As for Jim Woppit, he showed not the slightest partiality toward any one of the three suitors; with all he was upon terms of equal friendship. It seemed as if Jim had made up his mind in the beginning to let the best one win; it was a free, fair, square race, so far as Jim was concerned, and that was why Jim always had stanch backers in Jake Dodsley, Barber Sam, and Three-fingered Hoover.