18 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CEUISEE 



tive of personal peculiarities, others had been seized 

 upon because of a fancied resemblance the animal 

 designated bore to some friend or acquaintance 

 of the boys* Thus "Miss May," a large, digni- 

 fied jinny, was so christened on account of a strik- 

 ing likeness, in port and expression, to the buxom 

 proprietress of a local restaurant. " Mallet Head," 

 ' ( Pepper, " " Curly, " " Bed, " " Beetle " and ' ' Methu- 

 salum," were so styled for various qualities or de- 

 fects which caught the fancy of the self-appointed 

 committee on titles. "Whitey," the jack, who 

 looked like an albino, was in the days that followed 

 far more often called by some other and less ele- 

 gant term than his given name. A persistently per- 

 verse ego, in which he gloried, was responsible for 

 more mislaid tempers, I think, than any other one 

 item in the catalogue of daily trials. 



We found Kingston merely a melancholy collec- 

 tion of deserted buildings. Some of these were quite 

 evidently the ruins of rather imposing structures of 

 brick and stone. Across the front of the largest of 

 all, in faded letters, were the words "Board of 

 Trade." The place seemed inexpressibly lonesome 

 and cheerless, although in its day Kingston had been 

 a thriving mining camp of five thousand souls. But 

 with a drop in the price of silver and the closing of 

 the larger mines the city had been snuffed out like a 

 candle. 



Now there were but three families living within 

 its limits the Postmaster, an old miner who did 



