"... I am glad to tell you that we catched them two claim-jumpers [men who steal claims]. They'd spent all your stamps, sure enough, and you won't never see them no more; but it's a comfort that they got two years at Cañon City [where the penitentiary is]. Better luck next time. Come out again next summer, and I'll help you find an A1 mine...."
But Tom says that if he ever has any money at all, it will be earned in some good old-fashioned way; that he is not a "tender-foot," and that he does not want any more interest in prospect holes.
WOLF-CHILDREN.
BY JAMES GREENWOOD.
Some years ago a soldier stationed at Bondee, in India, while passing near a small stream, saw three wolf cubs and a boy drinking. He managed to seize the boy, who seemed about ten years old, but who was so wild and fierce that he tore the trooper's clothes, and bit him severely in several places. The soldier at first tied him up in the military gun shed, and fed him with raw meat; he was afterward allowed to wander freely about the Bondee bazar. A lad named Tanoo, servant of a Cashmere merchant then at Bondee, took compassion on the poor boy, and prepared a bed for him under the mango-tree where he himself lodged; here he kept him fastened to a tent-pin.
Up to this time he would eat nothing but raw flesh, but Tanoo gradually taught him to eat balls of rice and pulse. In about six weeks after he had been tied up, and after much rubbing of his joints with oil, he was made to stand and walk upright, whereas hitherto he had gone on all fours.
One night, while the boy was lying under the mango-tree, Tanoo saw two wolves creep stealthily toward him, and after smelling him, they touched him, when he got up. Instead, however, of being frightened, the boy put his hand upon their heads, and they began to play with him, capering about while he pelted them with grass and straw. Tanoo tried to drive them off, but could not. At last, however, they left, but the following night three wolves came, and a few nights after four, which returned several times.
The wolf-boy, however, could not be entirely reconciled to civilized life. In being removed from place to place he never lost an opportunity of endeavoring to escape into the jungle. At last Tanoo was sent away on a short journey, and when he returned, his savage charge had disappeared, and was never again heard of.
The story of another wolf-child is even more wonderful than the above.