OU tell her, Bill," said Longlegs. "Why me any mor'n you?" "You tell her, McGeehan," said

One Eye.

"Tell her yourself," McGeehan flung back. "I guess I'm as human as the next one."

And so it went on down the line of the dozen or more miners of Charlietown, everyone only too willing for the other fellow to do the telling, until the last man was reached — Nugget Casey, the youngest, biggest, strongest, most diffident of the bunch.

"It's up to you, Nug," grinned one of the boys. "If your lips can't say it to Missus Charlie, your eyes can. Them sky-blue blinks of yourn was made to break just this kind of news-and break it gently."

Nugget Casey's sky-blue eyes, under the sudden frown, looked a shade darker. "I reckon we'll play this here thing square. Anyone of us'd rather die than tell Missus Charlie. So none of us is going to lay down the law about the other fellow telling her. We'll draw straws. The shortest is the unlucky man."

It was over in a minute, and Fate picked Nugget Casey himself. Immediately the others began condoling with him, But he silenced them peremptorily. "Nothto it, fellows. Why, maybe it'll be pie. All according to the sort Missus Charlie is."

There was no stage running between Charlietown and Buffalo Creek, two thousand feet down the mountain, the nearest railroad station, but Nugget Casey, after tinkering half a day with his 1912 flivver, had coaxed it to run. The boys waved him an encouraging goodbye as the old boat laboriously and squeakingly sailed away, reminding him-half a dozen voices

"I'm sure you're here to take me up to Charlietown-but where's Charlie?"

Nugget said something-he didn't know exactly what. He had read of multiple personalities. As he spoke he had the notion that maybe the curious breed of psychologists were right, after all, and that a secondary personality had laid Nugget Casey low for the moment and was jumping right up on the job and assuming the prerogative with a capital P.

"Charlie's gone to the Hogback to see Joe Smith, a sick friend of his," said Mr. Secondary Personality. "Maybe Joe's croaking and maybe Charlie won't be back till night. Charlie's crazy goodhearted; brother's keeper business and all that. He's mighty sorry he can't be here. I'm Charlie's shackmate and bunkie." And out went the rehearsed fingers.

Missus Charlie grasped them heartily -with a second edition of that worldtransforming smile. "You're Francis Xavier Casey, nicknamed Nugget, aren't you? Well, there's nobody I'd rather be looking at right now than Nugget Casey -except Charlie-"

"I reckon, yes," agreed Nugget solemnly. Then he took up the alligator and led the way to the flivver. "A rheumatic old 1912, Missus Charlie," he apologized. "She squeaks and jerks and lunges and rattles and balks. But it's some walk up to Charlietown-and we can imagine we're riding anyway." He explained there was more room in the back seat but fewer jolts in the front, if she didn't mind sitting by him-which she didn't at all. So he put her things in the "tony"-that's what he called it-then helped her in, cranked heroically; the old engine responding, and they started gayly off. Immediately Missus Charlie began chatting in the friendliest way, lauding the boat on the strenuous manner in which it attacked the hill, admiring the scenery, thanking whoever it was that had named Charlietown for her own Charlie-and, by the way-Charlie was well, wasn't he?-and fat?-and brown? -and longing for Missus Charlie?

"You know it's six long months since he left me to come away up here to timberline," she said with the shake in her voice that Nugget had been dreading, "and we'd been married only a little while then. Maybe you don't know what that means-but surely you can realize I'm wild to see him and-"

"I knew it!" exclaimed Nugget at a sudden shot-like sound, applying the reluctant old emergency brake and leaping out. "That left-hand hind tire's blowed out just as I foresaw."

"How interesting!" laughed Missus Charlie.

She alighted and insisted on helping him jack up the car. He had never had such enthusiastic-if bungling - assistance; and he would have been sorry the operation wasn't to last all day if she hadn't begun talking of Charlie again. She asked him a lot of questions that turned him faint, but he bent over the exploded tire doggedly, at last reminding her a bit testily that mending blowouts wasn't any picnic and talking was simply out of the question. After that Missus Charlie just looked on-sympathetically.

The old 1912 pulled up the mean grade corkingly after that, and when they reached the level plateau that led to

Charlietown, Nugget gave her gas and they tore in spectacularly, scattering Longlegs, McGeehan, One Eye and the rest, who were picturesquely on hand to greet the first white lady that had ever invaded Charlietown.

The boys all stood in a ring-around-arosy circle, doffed their headgears and almost bowed to the ground, their faces no redder than before.

"Welcome to Charlietown, Missus Charlie," tremulously began One Eye. "We're sorry-"

"Sorry?" boomed Nugget Casey, catapulting toward him from his seat beside Missus Charlie. "What have we got to be sorry for? Just because we ain't got a brass band here to meet our honored visitor and so on? Come, One Eye, use your brains-Missus Charlie's not looking for New York attractions at timberline."

The boys flashed puzzled glances at one another. What was all this apocryphal gassing of Nugget Casey's about? Hadn't he told her about Charlie? Of course not-look at that smile on her pretty face. Well, then

But Nugget was asking Missus Charlie to wait right where she was for a couple of minutes; then he signed to the others to follow him behind One Eye's shack. Then he turned on them fiercely, exploding in pent whispers:

"Now, don't nobody say a word. None of you could have done any different. I've got a hundred on my clothes that I'll give to the first one that'll go out there and tell her the truth about Charlie. Look at that face on her. Was there ever another such face created by God Almighty? How could I tell her-looking into them eyes, stalled by that smile? Well, then. Now, I'm not forgetting I drew the shortest straw; I'm going to tell her but not yet. We're going to let her get unpacked first-let her sit down in a rocking chair-and take a look at these glorious mountains-and get to calling us by our names-then, when the sun dips over Schoolgirl hill, I'll take her two little hands in mine and tell her about Charlie."

There was mysterious whisperings pro and con, while One Eye used his solitary peeper' round the corner of the

shack to see that Missus Charlie kept her seat and did not wander towards them. But suddenly Longlegs startled everybody with a belated piece of aptness:

"You say, Nugget, you want the lady to set down in a rocking chair and so forth. Fine. But where? Not in Charlie's shack, surely?"

"Lord, no," gasped Nugget-as the others groaned.

Longlegs smiled-he liked the role of damper. "Ain't no lady's house to take her to Charlietown's a stage town, as all of us know. Can't take her to my shack, or yours, or anybody else's. Charlietown's out of the world; but decency's decency. I reckon you'll agree a lady's sometimes a white elephant. You want to wait till sunset to tell Missus Charlie about Charlie-well, she can't set in the fliv till then, can she? She wants to wash up; mebbe she desires a siesta-certainly she'll want that rocking chair you mentioned so eloquent. And how about a meal of victuals? Now, since Black Violetta's left us high and dry and the mess house is no more, there ain't a decent cook in the place-"

"Shut up, will you?" growled Nugget Casey. "Where'd you get SO many words? Listen, boys; I've got an inspiration. There's that elegant little shack poor Jimsie lived in before he moved out to the City of the Dead. It's empty, but why can't we move the best all of us have into the place and fix up a regular home for Missus Charlie? She-"

"Jest for her to set in till sunsetwhile you're screwing up your nerve?" cut in Longlegs incredulously.

""Till sunset? All night, you mean," corrected Nugget. "That's only humanity -imagine her over at Charlie's tonight! What d'ye say, boys? Can't we fix her up an Exclusive Ladies' Hotel as an emergency measure?"

Certainly they could; and they proceeded to prove it. So Missus Charlie, perched up in the old 1912, saw diverting doings-a bed brought from this shack, a table from that, a strip of rag carpet from another; chairs, lamps, a kitchen stove, dishes, pots and pans; a sofa covered with a Navajo blanket, a Bible

carried solemnly and sowewhat ostentatiously by One Eye, and other stuff— stacks of it. In half an hour everything was ready, so fast did those boys work; and Nugget Casey, whom a post-impressionist would have painted just then as one world-embracing grin, garnished with illusory bits of a human face, came up to the car to escort Missus Charlie to the shack of poor Jimsie, who had taken up quarters in the City of the Dead, incidentally the sole inhabitant of that sinister town, as the one wooden slab up on Schoolgirl hill testified.

"It's all fixed," Nugget said bloomingly. "You'll find it chock full of all the comforts of home."

Missus Charlie was pardonably puzzled. "Mighty nice of you, Mr. Francis Xavier Casey, nicknamed Nugget. But what's the matter with Charlie's house-the one you and he occupied?" Nugget hesitated. "Where is it?" she persisted.

"There" pointing to one on the edge of the cluster standing slightly apart, curtains covering the two niggardly windows, the door inhospitably closed-and locked, one would have wagered.

"But why have you taken all this trouble? Take me to Charlie's; he'll expect to find me there when he comes back-won't he?" Nugget still hesitated. "There must be something the matter with-maybe you fear it's not in condition to receive me. Nonsense! I'll get to work and clean it; I know how men hate housework-they're busy at other things. You, Mr. Nugget, may help me-"

"It's-it's not that, exactly," stammered Nugget. "It's the the mountain rats-" "Mountain rats? Horrors!"

"Exactly horrors and no mistaketwice as fierce as ordinary rats, three times as hungry, five times as big!"

That settled it. Missus Charlie accompanied Nugget Casey to the Exclusive Ladies' Hotel without further objections. On the way he cheerfully promised to get after the mountain rats with a shotgun in the morning. "That'll scatter 'em, I reckon," he said. "They hate shotguns. Meanwhile let's forget 'em."

The Exclusive Ladies' Hotel sight-also a sort of mystic maze.

was a

The

two rooms of poor Jimsie's shack were

Four tables, fifteen chairs, three washtubs, two Pharaoh's horses and a tragically incomplete St. Cecilia-these were random items picked from the medley of household wreckage that the Charlietown boys in their mad enthusiasm had stuffed, packed, jammed into Jimsie's.

"Beautiful!" cried Missus Charlie with that God's-angel smile of hers. "I could live here forever and be happy-"

"Wait one small little minute," put in Damper Longlegs triumphantly. "We ain't forgotten nothing but the unforgettables. Where's the eats?"

All looked at one another, then at Nugget Casey, who blushed like a windy sunset. "It ain't that we ain't got the eats," he gravely delivered, "it's just that we're chipmunk-brained fools. Scat, boys, to your various mansions and scrape your cupboards. Missus Charlie's human, which means prone to hunger." And Nugget was the first one out of the house, the rest whooping it after.

But Damper Longlegs was on the job throwing wet blankets. "Ain't this mirth unseemly, as the poet remarks?" he inquired of Nugget on the run. "What about poor Charlie? Won't she hold it agin us after everything's out?"

"Crossing bridges," sniffled Nugget. "Besides, ain't this a tonic treatmentgiving her something to fall back on when I tell her about Charlie? Wring your blankets, Longlegs-hang 'em out to dry."

In five minutes just about all the presentable eatables in Charlietown had been transported to the Exclusive Ladies' Hotel-from flour and frying compounds to canned chile con carne and potted cheese. The delectable conglomeration inspired Missus Charlie with a brilliant thought, designed to ravish hungry timberliners:

"Boys, what do you say? Charlie insists I'm almost as good a cook as his dead mother. Do you think a square meal would taste civilized again? Also how many of you don't like pie and hot biscuit? Now, if that stove will only draw-"

Draw? That little old-fashioned box cooker? Longlegs himself-blanketless

like a March wind through the Narrows on Moonshine Gulch-and he'd prove it by making the fire himself.

The little stove lived up to his enconiums-it drew like a tornado. Missus Charlie, happy as a child, put a big barber-like apron over her finery and proceeded to cook the finest dinner Charlietown could remember-shaming Black Violetta's best efforts in the mess house's palmiest days. Nugget Casey saw to the souring of the canned milk on the champion cooker, and they had-O, luxury!— sour-milk-and-soda biscuit; and big, deep apple pies made from canned apples that tasted like the orchard itself; and too many other palate-tickelers for one to tell about.

Then they sat down to the feast, and, of course, Missus Charlie, flushed and beautiful, had to say with a heart-breaking sigh:

"Oh, if Charlie were only here-!"

Then a silence fell on the board, and those of the Charlietowners who could look through the window at Charlie's shack did so. Nugget Casey almost grew pale, and the biscuit going down his throat met something coming up. Long. legs, the wet blanketer, seemed on the point of unfurling his specialty, but a fierce glare from Casey's sky-blue eyes changed his mind. Missus Charlie, fearing that her frequent reference to Charlie's absence smacked of ingratitude to these boys who were doing the honors for him so gloriously, suddenly determined to let him rest for a while, so she plunged into the smallest and gayest sort of chatter, astonishing and charming Charlie's friends, lifting the oppression that had begun to hang like a cloud over Nugget Casey, and playing havoc with Longleg's blankets.

So the meal went off to a fizzling finale. One Eye produced the pop from some movie serial secret panel in his shack, and after a dozen healths to Missus Charlie, and a dozen sneaking looks through the window at Charlie's lonesome shack, all but Nugget Casey backed off and made a flourishy getaway. By tacit agreement they had decided that now was Nugget's time to vindicate his