18 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
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,’’ ‘‘Red,’’ ‘‘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 
