1. British Columbia miners off shift. 2. Wrecked through a wash-out. 3. A section of a mountain mining town. FACING PAGE 205. 1. An exhausted prospector. 2. A miner's washing day. 3. Ready to start for the hills to inspect a mine. 4. Miners off to their daily toil. TRAIL-TALES OF WESTERN CANADA OLD KEN'S ROUND-UP Old Ken was "down on his luck." For well-nigh fifty years he had "gone the pace" in a district where certain men say glibly, "there's no God west of the Rockies." The old prospector had been, according to those who knew him best, in one of three conditions for some years. He was either "getting drunk, drunk, or sobering up." And yet in spite of his weakness and sin, and in spite of the curses he got, there was no more popular man in the whole camp than Old Ken, although likely he was not conscious of it. One of the miners had once expressed a conviction about Ken that was dangerously popular. It was at the time Frank Stacey's mother died, in the East, and Frank had not "two bits" to his credit. As might have been expected, it was Old Ken who started the hat to wire that Frank was leaving on the next train, and to see that he had "enough of the needful to do the decent thing." "It's his last chance, boys," said Ken, as he made the rounds during the noon hour. "I got twenty-two dollars since eleven o'clock, so I guess, with what you fellers is a-going to do, the old camp's on the job, as usual, when a chap like Frank wants to pay his last respects." There was some mystery about those twenty-two dollars until Andy the bar-tender told how Old Ken had "got it out of the boss" on the solemn promise that for two weeks he would "work like a Texas steer" without touching a cent until the debt of thirty dollars, minus eight for board, was discharged. Then it was that one of the boys expressed himself thus about Ken: "By gosh, fellers, he's white clear through, that same old soak is, when there's any trouble on. He's a pile decenter than his thirsty old carcase 'll let him be." On a particular morning some months ago the old prospector stood at the little station a mile or so away from the camp centre. The "mixed" was winding her way slowly around the curves of the summit of the Rockies. From the windows of the solitary passenger car a young man looked somewhat anxiously across the valley below. A few shacks nestled among the poplar brush, and in the distance an unpainted building stood, with distinct outline, towering against the dark background of the mountain range opposite. The young man knew well enough, from his work among the miners and loggers, that yonder building was as a moral cancer eating out the best life of the community. The outlook was not bright, but he was on the King's Business, and he knew that he had in his care the mightiest thing, and the greatest remedy, the world knows of.