My sympathies were all with Hoover; he and I were pardners. He loved the girl in his own beautiful, awkward way. He seldom spoke of her to me, for he was not the man to unfold what his heart treasured. He was not an envious man, yet sometimes he would tell how he regretted that early education had not fallen to his lot, for in that case he, too, might have been a poet. Mother--the old red fiddle--was his solace. Coming home to our cabin late of nights I'd hear him within scraping away at that tune De Blanc had written for him, and he believed what Mother sung to him in her squeaky voice of the deathlessness of true love. And many a time--I can tell it now--many a time in the dead of night I have known him to steal out of the cabin with Mother and go up the main road to the gateway of The Bower, where, in moonlight or in darkness (it mattered not to him), he would repeat over and over again that melancholy tune, hoping thereby to touch the sensibilities of the lady of his heart. In the early part of February there was a second robbery. This time the stage was overhauled at Lone Pine, a ranch five miles beyond the camp. The details of this affair were similar to those of the previous business in the glen. A masked man sprang from the roadside, presented two revolvers at Steve Barclay's head, and called upon all within the stage to come out, holding up their hands. The outrage was successfully carried out, but the booty was inconsiderable, somewhat less than eight hundred dollars falling into the highwayman's hands. The robber and his pals fled as before; the time that elapsed before word could be got to camp facilitated the escape of the outlaws. A two days' scouring of the surrounding country revealed absolutely no sign or trace of the fugitives. But it was pretty evident now that the two crimes had been committed by a gang intimately acquainted with, if not actually living in, the locality. Confirmation of this was had when five weeks later the stage was again stopped and robbed at Lone Pine under conditions exactly corresponding with the second robbery. The mystery baffled the wits of all. Intense excitement prevailed; a reward of five thousand dollars was advertised for the apprehension of the outlaws; the camp fairly seethed with rage, and the mining country for miles around was stirred by a determination to hunt out and kill the miscreants. Detectives came from Denver and snooped around. Everybody bought extra guns and laid in a further supply of ammunition. Yet the stage robbers--bless you! nobody could find hide or hair of 'em.