all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully
nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with
her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one
emphasized by the blue-gray heap of earth and granite--the dump--formed
by the labors of the restless men who burrowed in the rock for precious
metal. The road, which seemed to have no ending-place, was blazed
through the brush and through the hills in either direction across the
miles and miles of this land without a people. The houses of Borealis
stood to right and left of this path through the wilderness, as if by
common consent to let it through.

Meagre, unknown, unimportant Borealis, with her threescore men and one
decent woman, shared, like the weightiest empire, in the smile, the
care, the yearning of the ever All-Pitiful, greeting the earth with
another perfect day.

Intelligence of what could be expected, in the way of a celebration at
the blacksmith-shop of Webber, had been more than merely spread; it had
almost been flooded over town. Long before the hour of ten, scheduled
by common consent for church to commence, Webber was sweeping sundry
parings of horse-hoof and scraps of iron to either side of his hard
earth floor, and sprinkling the dust with water that he flirted from
his barrel. He likewise wiped off the anvil with his leathern apron,
and making a fire in the forge to take off the chill, thrust in a huge
hunk of iron to irradiate the heat.

Many of the denizens of Borealis came and laid siege to the barber-shop
as early as six in the morning. Hardly a man in the place, except
Parky, the gambler, had been dressed in extravagance so imposing since
the 4th of July as was early apparent in the street. Bright new