"They're in the top bunk yonder," said Black Dan, with a weary air. "An' my belt and pouch, containin' the other stuff, that's all in the bunk, too. I may's well save ye the trouble o' lookin' for it, as ye'd find it anyways. I was _sure_ ye'd never succeed in trackin' me down, so I didn't bother to hide it. An' I see now ye _wouldn't_ 'a' got me, Tug, ef it hadn't 'a' been fer Jim. That's where I made the mistake o' my life, not stoppin' to make sure I'd done Jim up." "No, Dan," said Blackstock, "ye're wrong there. Ef you'd done Jim up I'd have caught ye jest the same, in the long run, fer I'd never have quit the trail till I _did_ git ye. An' when I got ye--well, I'd hev forgot myself, mebbe, an' only remembered that ye'd killed my best friend. Ef ye'd had as many lives as a cat, Dan, they wouldn't hev been enough to pay fer that dawg." V. The Fire at Brine's Rip Mills I When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine's Rip and set up a modest dressmaker's shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes in their direction. Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration. Then he was at her feet--which was a pleasant place to be, seeing that those same small feet were shod with a neatness which was a perpetual reproach to the untidy sawdust strewn roadways of Brine's Rip. Even Big Andy, the boyish young giant from the Oromocto, wavered for a few hours in his allegiance to the postmistress. But Mary was much too tactful to draw upon her pretty shoulders the hostility of such a power as the postmistress, and Big Andy's enthusiasm was cold-douched in its first glow. As for the womenfolk of Brine's Rip, it was not to be expected that they would agree any too cordially with the men on the subject of Mary Farrell. But one instance of Mary's tact made even the most irreconcilable of her own sex sheath their claws in dealing with her. She had come from Harner's Bend. The Mills at Harner's Bend were anathema to Brine's Rip Mills. A keen trade rivalry had grown, fed by a series of petty but exasperating incidents, into a hostility that blazed out on the least occasion. And pretty Mary had come from Harner's Bend. Brine's Rip did not find it out till Mary's spell had been cast and secured, of course. But the fact was a bitter one to swallow. No one else but Mary Farrell could have made Brine's Rip swallow it. One day Big Andy, greatly daring, and secure in his renovated allegiance to the postmistress, ventured to chaff Mary about it. She turned upon him, half amused and half indignant.