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It happened that Jake Dodsley was one of the victims of the highwayman’s greed. He had been to Denver and was bringing home a pair of elaborate gold earrings which he intended for–for Miss Woppit, of course. Poets have deeper and stronger feelings than common folk. Jake Dodsley’s poetic nature rebelled when he found himself deprived of those lovely baubles intended for the idol of his heart. So, no sooner had the outlaw retreated to the brush than Jake Dodsley whipped out his gun and took to the same brush, bent upon an encounter with his despoiler. Poor Jake never came from the brush alive. The rest heard the report of a rifle shot, and when, some time later, they found Jake, he was dead, with a rifle ball in his head.

The first murder done and the fourth robbery! Yet the mystery was as insoluble as ever. Of what avail was the rage of eight hundred miners, the sagacity of the indefatigable officers of the law, and the united efforts of the vengeance-breathing population throughout the country round about to hunt the murderers down? Why, it seemed as if the devil himself were holding justice up to ridicule and scorn.

We had the funeral next day. Sir Charles Lackington came by private wagon in the morning; his daughter was with him. Their escape from participation in the affair of the previous day naturally filled them with thanksgiving, yet did not abate their sympathy for the rest of us in our mourning over the dead poet. Sir Charles was the first to suggest a fund for a monument to poor Jake, and he headed the subscription list with one hundred dollars, cash down. A noble funeral it was; everybody cried; at the grave Three-fingered Hoover recited the poem about true love and Jim Woppit threw in a wreath of hollyhock leaves which his sister had sent–the poor thing was too sick to come herself. She must have cared more for Jake than she had ever let on, for she took to her bed when she heard that he was dead.

Amid the deepest excitement further schemes for the apprehension of the criminals who had so long baffled detection were set on foot and–but this is not a story of crime; it is the story of a wooing, and I must not suffer myself to be drawn away from the narrative of that wooing. With the death of the poet Dodsley one actor fell out of the little comedy. And yet another stepped in at once. You would hardly guess who it was–Mary Lackington. This seventeen-year-old girl favored her father in personal appearance and character; she was of the English type of blonde beauty–a light-hearted, good-hearted, sympathetic creature who recognized it as her paramount duty to minister to her invalid father. He had been her instructor in books, he had conducted her education, he had directed her amusements, he had been her associate–in short, father and daughter were companions, and from that sweet companionship both derived a solace and wisdom precious above all things else. Mary Lackington was, perhaps, in some particulars mature beyond her years; the sweetness, the simplicity, and the guilelessness of her character was the sweetness, the simplicity, and the guilelessness of childhood. Fair and innocent, this womanly maiden came into the comedy of that mountain wooing.

Three-fingered Hoover had never been regarded an artful man, but now, all at once, for the first time in his life, he practised a subtlety. He became acquainted with Mary Lackington; I am not sure that he did not meet Sir Charles at the firemen’s muster in Pueblo some years before. Getting acquainted with Miss Mary was no hard thing; the girl flitted whithersoever she pleased, and she enjoyed chatting with the miners, whom she found charmingly fresh, original, and manly, and as for the miners, they simply adored Miss Mary. Sir Charles owed his popularity largely to his winsome daughter.