“That’s just who it is,” answered the Colonel, “and isn’t that Mitty Bruce’s voice?” This question called to the doorway a female vision in brilliant pink calico. It was a buxom, high-colored country girl of some twenty-one years, coarse featured but not uncomely, her face almost as pink as her dress, her figure of the mature proportions of the early-ripening Californian. “Well, well, is this Mitty?” said the new-comer, holding out his hand. “You have to come up to the foot-hills to see a handsome girl. I’d never have known you, you’ve grown up so and got so good-looking.” Mitty sidled up giggling and placed a big, red paw in his. “Oh, get out!” she said, “ain’t you just awful!” “I won’t get out and I’m not a bit awful. You’ve got to take care of me at supper and tell me everything that’s happened in Foleys since I was here last.” “Let her alone to do that,” said Forsythe. “There ain’t anything that goes on in Eldorado and Amador Counties that Mitty don’t know. She’s the best newspaper we got round here.” Mrs. Forsythe here put her head over the stair-rail and informed the Colonel that his room was ready. He ran up stairs to “wash up” while the other two repaired to the dining-room. A few minutes later he reappeared and entered the low-ceilinged room that smelled of fresh paint and cooking. It was past the supper hour at Foleys and only a few men lingered over the end of their meal. By a table at the window, cleanly spread and set, Mitty was standing. When she saw him she pulled out a chair and, with its back resting against her waist, pointed to the seat. “Set right down here,” she said, “everything’s ready for you.” Then as he obeyed she pushed him in, saying over his shoulder: “It’s real nice to see you again, Colonel. It seems awful long since you was here last.” The Colonel looked up at her with an eye of twinkling friendliness. She was gazing at him with childish pleasure and affection. He had known Mitty since her tenth year when Forsythe and his wife had adopted her, the only child of a dying woman whose husband had been killed in a mine. “Good girl, Mitt,” he said. “Have you got all the gossip of the last four years saved up for me?” “I guess I can tell you as much as most,” she answered, not without pride, and then flourished off to the hole in the dining-room which communicated with the kitchen. When she had set his supper before him she sat down opposite, her elbows on the table, comfortably settled for the gossip the traveler had requested. “Foleys seems to be livening up,” he said. “I noticed several new stores. What’s happening?” “Foleys!” exclaimed Mitty, with the Californian’s loyalty to his native burg, “Foleys is the liveliest town along the mother lode. There ain’t nothing the matter with Foleys! It’s the Gracey boys’ strike up at the Buckeye Belle mine that’s whooping things up.”