Old Zeke Runkle’s annual swindles had been a camp joke for a score of years; but Sherwood--being an in-experienced stranger--saw only in him an honest (if usually drunken) prospector. A kindly, if simple, old man, too; for Zeke had generously made him a gift of an entire mining claim which had not been included in the original number--one quite distinct from the original group. True, it seemed to be but an undeveloped claim--its one tunnel only running in ten or fifteen feet. And the gift had been tendered him at the suggestion of Cadwallader, from whom Sherwood was surprised to receive evidence of a kindly feeling which had not been previously displayed. That this unusual interest in him had surprised old Zeke, too, was plain; for he seemed puzzled at first, as though it were not possible for him to comprehend Cadwallader’s meaning. After a few whispered words from the younger man, however, Zeke’s face had brightened with understanding, and he turned to Sherwood insisting he must accept it. The unexpected part Cadwallader had taken, and the old man’s unselfish attitude, showed to Sherwood such a fine glimpse of Western good-fellowship that he warmed to the place and the people as he had done at no time before. It turned the scale and the bargain was closed. So he became sole owner of the seven mines on the sagebrush-covered hills, that comprised the Golden Eagle group; and of the one isolated claim in the foot of the bluffs that rose abruptly at the edge of an old-time ruined mining camp which had been deserted for more than thirty years. It lay there in a cañon where once men came in search of precious metals; and in that cleft of the mountains they built their homes. Along the cañon sides, from end to end, there trailed a double line of houses, now all in ruins--fallen walls of adobe or stone. Roofless and floorless, with empty casements and doorways, the houses stood mute witnesses of the false hopes which once led men to squander money, and youth, and strength of purpose there in the long-ago, when the State was new.