After the scouting days were quite over, not long ago, by the way, Jim Buckley had struck out for Wyoming, where he looked about him and finally settled in the Crooked Horn district all alone. He was prospecting. And as he was a great big leisurely sort of fellow, never in a hurry, and quite unconvinced of the necessity for being so, it took him a great many years to complete the prospecting to his satisfaction. In fact it was only recently that he had fully convinced himself and others of the value of what he had found. At first he had worked the surface over inch by inch Then he had staked out his more experimental claims. Then he had burrowed and grubbed and delved, single-handed, through a network of shafts, tunnels, and drifts. It is slow work--single-handed. In the morning you make little holes with a hand drill, and fill them with powder. At noon you blast. In the afternoon you cart away débris by means of an inadequate little bucket. This takes time and patience, both of which Jim Buckley possessed. Once a month he went to town, riding one horse and leading another, for the purpose of buying supplies. The rest of the time he lived alone. That is, he lived alone except that directly opposite the window, where the light always struck it fair, he had carefully fastened a small colored portrait on ivory. It was the picture of a woman, delicately tinted, young with laughing blue eyes and a mouth whose corners turned upward in so droll a manner that you would have sworn its owner had never known a care in her fresh young life. It was the picture of another man's wife. She had known care, of the bitterest, blackest kind, and in her darkest days she had been murdered, mercifully perhaps. After he had hauled the last little bucket of broken rock up to the surface of the ground, and had ranged all sorts of utensils in the open fireplace for the evening meal, Jim Buckley used to light his pipe and sit looking at this little portrait for a long time. For, you see, he was simply made, with no complexities--a few simple purposes, a few simple ideas, a few simple friendships, a few simple passions--but they were the stronger and deeper and more soul-satisfying for that. He did not need incident or sorrow or regret to round out his life. It was well poised and sufficient. So he used to look upon the face of this other man's wife from under sombre brows, but through clear eyes. No one could have guessed what his slow deep thoughts were at such times, nor what he found, whether of peace or unrest, in his contemplation of a portrait of the past. He said it made him better. Perhaps it did.