"SIR: I have the pleasure to transmit herewith a silver life-saving medal which has been awarded you under authority of section 7 of the Act of June 20, 1874, section 12 of the Act of June 18, 1878, and section 9 of the Act of May 4, 1882, in recognition of your courage and humanity in saving three persons from drowning October 25, 1884. "I have the honor to be, very respectfully, D. MANNING, "_Secretary._" And the same day there reached him by express the silver medal in a neat case. [Illustration: OBVERSE. REVERSE.] A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HERMIT. (_Concluded._) BY ALFRED TERRY BACON. One evening my quiet hermitage seemed more silent than ever before. That small dog, Gip, slept soundly on the earthen floor, tired out with a long day's run through the park. I had just chased away a friendly striped snake that had squirmed in through a mouse-hole and settled itself comfortably, wishing to make its home with me. The field-mice trooped silently about the room in dozens, over the table and under the chairs,--but there is no defense against them. The other night they had the impudence to sit on my pillow and pull out my hair for their nests. "Their tameness is shocking to me," as Alexander Selkirk, the original Robinson Crusoe, complained of the beasts on his island. [Illustration: HEAD OF THE BISON, OR AMERICAN BUFFALO. [SEE NEXT PAGE.]] Plotting against the mice, without lighting a lamp I sat by the doorway as the darkness deepened, for the night was too warm and too fine for lamp-light. The long midsummer twilight faded to a narrow band of gray just over the mountain-peak; and looking out, I could hear none of the familiar sounds of the wilderness--even the murmuring pine-woods were hushed in the perfectly calm night. But presently a soft splashing sound came from the pool in the brook behind the house. It reminded me that for nearly a year I had been living within fifty steps of a colony of beavers, and had not yet seen a single one of them; for they are never out by daylight and I am never out by night.