She loved him with a noble devotion, and, although he was incapable of a like attachment, he loved her, too, after a fashion of his own.

The day before Christmas dawned loweringly. Toward the middle of the afternoon, huge, lumbering clouds began to loom in the Northwest. All signs portended one of those fierce, cold storms that occasionally descend upon the border, arresting torrents in chains of ice, and freezing even the shaggy-coated buffaloes.

At nightfall the wind, changing to the northeast, grew stronger and brought snow. As the cold increased, the snow was condensed into fine particles that bit like needles into the cheeks of belated miners struggling toward their cabins. The gusts were so violent that it was impossible to see even a lighted window at a few yards' distance.

But

It was considerably past Jim Oaks' supper-time. as Oaks was the only man in the camp who did n't have to cook his own meals, he had lapsed into a habit of coming in late for supper, for which fault his wife, who was not of a complaining disposition, never reproached him.

It was seven o'clock. Mrs. Oaks fed the fire, then stepped to the pane of glass which formed the only window in the diggings, and essayed to look out into the night. The glass was caked inside with frost and covered on the outside by a snowdrift. Sighing, the young wife returned to her seat by the fire, and then, putting her hand into the bosom of her dress, she drew out-what? A well-worn copy of the New Testament.

There was something covert in the manner in which she brought this volume into the light, and, thinking she heard a noise at the door, she thrust it back again. Jim Oaks had somehow and somewhere acquired so rank a detestation of the Holy Scriptures that he could not bear to hear them quoted from or even mentioned.

Finding that the noise was nothing but the crunch of a settling drift, she opened the little book and began to read.

The passages on which Minerva Oaks was accustomed to dwell were all marked and underscored with a pencil. High-spirited and able to handle a rifle or a revolver on occasion, she was also a sincere Christian, and quiet in her ways.

She sat, with the Testament spread open on her lap, and the Christmas Eve supper growing browner in front of the fire, until nearly eight o'clock. Then, as a mighty throe of the storm threatened to wrench the cabin from its foundations, she started up with a cry:

"Jim! why, Jim was to be off at Wild Swan Gulch this afternoon. He was going to get us some feathers for Christmas. Ah, me! it is eight o'clock. And the storm! How ever can he find his way home?"

Springing to the door, she lifted the hickory latch and drew it toward her. The mass of snow which had been piled against it fell in and streamed across the floor, and the blast, driving in more snow, extinguished the candle. "Hah!"

In a few moments she had managed to sweep away a part of the drift and close the door. Then she re-lit the candle. Going to an old horsehide-covered trunk in a corner, she pulled out of it her husband's spare suit, dressed herself in it, and put on the long rubber boots Jim wore when he worked in the sluices; then his old cap, tied close to her head with a comforter; then her own thick shawl and mittens. Lighting her lantern and taking a shovel, she opened the door again and attacked the drift until it yielded far enough to let her latch the door behind her.

The night was awful.

She could see nothing through

She

the skurry. She hardly dared to turn her face to the yelling blast. She thought of asking some one to accompany her, but the camp lay some distance out of her line. Moreover, she knew the country in every direction. could feel her way anywhere if necessary; besides, she had her lantern-that would enable her to distinguish objects within a small circle. Turning resolutely in the direction of Wild Swan Gulch, she set out to find her husband and guide him home.

As she emerged from the canyon and gained the level of the surrounding broken plain, a strange pause came. It seemed as though the winds had suddenly forsaken the neighborhood and gone reeling away into the mountains. She took advantage of this sinister calm to hurry onward at a run. Out of breath at last, she stumbled and fell. The lantern went out.

She had no matches!

Staggering to her feet, she heard the moan of the returning storm. She shouted:

"Jim!"

Again, with all the might of her voice, she lifted the plainsman's call:

"Yip, yip, yip; ya-hoo! Jim!''

No answer.

Then the tempest rushed round her in a baffling, ferocious whirl of sound and wind and snow.

In the meantime, Jim Oaks had been at one of his old diversions. Having returned from Wild Swan Gulch with a splendid trophy in the shape of a black-billed swan drake, he was lounging toward home when the storm came on, and stopped in at the last saloon, as usual, to get a drink. It was always warm and cozy in that liquormill, and on Christmas Eve the place was peculiarly inviting. The boys were assembling for a night at poker, and Jim sat down and took a hand.

"It's kind o' rough on Minerv," he thought once, about midnight, "leavin' her alone up thar such a night as this. Never mind; she 'll worry it through, I reckon. But when the man entered his cabin next morning and started toward the bed with a peace-offering extended in his hand, he was completely stunned by what he saw. The untouched bed, the fireless hearth, the cold, untasted supper, his wife's clothes strewn on the floor, the open trunk, the absent cap and lantern-these flashed the truth into his brain.

"She's gone to hunt for me! She's been gone a long while all night, p'rhaps—in the storm. O Minerv!"

Out he sprang through the doorway. The storm was over. The air was clear, still, and bitterly cold. The sun was rising. He cast one strenuous look around the narrow horizon, then plunged through the drifts toward the camp.

"Minerv!" he shouted. "Have any of you seen

Minerv?"

Immediately the camp roused itself from its slumbers. When it was found that Mrs. Oaks was missing, the miners volunteered as one man to go to her rescue. It was hard work floundering across the gullies and washouts, which

were packed to the edge with snow. Often the men shuddered to think of what might be hidden under those heavy white masses.

The first "sign" was discovered by Jim Oaks' partner, one "Spick" Jones, who kept to the left and signaled from a clump of timber. The bark was partially torn off about four feet from the ground, on the side of the tree, not by the teeth or claws of a wild beast, but, as was plainly to be seen, by the hands of a human creature. Almost every miner was familiar with the trick. It was a trick to keep from freezing at the sacrifice of nails and finger-tips.

Jim Oaks set his teeth hard when he saw the frozen blood-spots on the tree.

"Stay with me, boys," he said, hoarsely, "and help me find my wife."

The men struggled on.

Some two hours later a figure on a distant bluff was seen waving a hat. All sought the place, where the wind. had blown so fiercely during the preceding night that it had prevented the snow from lodging on the windward ridges. Mrs. Oaks lay on her back there, half covered with snow, frozen to sleep. Her left hand was thrust inside the vest she wore; her right was extended above her head and covered with blood from her poor, torn fingers. Everybody made way for Jim.

He came up and knelt down reverently beside her, and kissed her rigid lips.

"Minerv,

feel her heart.

"Minerv!"

he said, gently. He reached, trying to

He looked around on the faces of his fellow-miners with such an expression on his drawn and haggard visage that they turned away.

He touched the cold hand in her bosom. It covered something which she had clutched for when she fell. He drew it forth; it was her Testament. Opening it mechanically at the fly-leaf, he saw the words, written, perhaps, long before:

"This book has been my comfort.

"Read it, Jim."

And below:

"I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth

in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

"Boys," said Jim, half rising to his feet, and holding out the open book with both his trembling hands, "she 's left me-her Testament. See!"

Anonymous.

THE UTILITY OF BOOING.

This selection is taken from an old English play, "The Man of the World." It was written to satirize a mean old Scotchman who amassed a large fortune by questionable means, and was elevated to the Peerage under the title of the Earl of Eldon. The Earl, who is represented in the play as Sir Pertinax MacSycophant, is giving his son Egerton an account of his successful business ventures.

SIR PERTINAX MACSYCOPHANT AND Egerton.

SIR P. Zounds! sir, I will not hear a word aboot it; I insist upon it you are wrong; you should have paid your court till my lord, and not have scrupled swallowing a bumper or twa, or twenty, till oblige him.

EGER. Sir, I did drink his toast in a bumper.

SIR P. Yes, you did; but how, how?—just as a bairn takes physic-with aversions and wry faces, which my lord observed; then, to mend the matter, the moment that he and the Colonel got intill a drunken dispute aboot religion, you slily slunged away.

EGER. I thought, sir, it was time to go when my lord insisted upon half-pint bumpers.

SIR P. Sir, that was not leveled at you, but at the Colonel, in order to try his bottom; but they aw agreed that you and I should drink out of sma' glasses.

EGER. But, sir, I beg pardon; I did not choose to drink any more.

SIR P. But, zoons! sir, I tell you there was a necessity for your drinking mair.

EGER. A necessity! in what respect, pray, sir?

SIR P. Why, sir, I have a certain point to carry, independent of the lawyers, with my lord, in this agreement of your marriage-aboot which I am afraid we shall have a warm squabble-and therefore I wanted your assistance in it.