We will now suppose twenty-four hours to have passed Since the scenes narrated in the last chapter.

The gloaming is beginning to gloam.

It began to look as though if something were not done for Pumpkin Jim pretty previously, he would pass with a gentle, gliding movement up the flume.

He was growing fainter hour by hour, and the extreme torpidity of his liver, gave rise to grave apprehensions on the part of his gentle guardian.

His leg also gave him extreme pain and cause for uneasiness, to say the least. It had swollen to about the size of a flour barrel, and was still swelling as we go to press.

He opened his eyes with a low moan, and looked up into the limber sun-bonnet.

"Beauteous one, with the ethereal brow!" he began, but Geraldine blushed and bade him let up.

"Gentle lady," he began again, "I am aware that the crisis is near. Unless I have help very soon, in some form or other, I shall have clomb the golden stair. Already the circulation is impaired, and the transverse duplex has ceased to vibrate. Dissolution is coming on. My pulse grows feebler hour by hour, and I feel that another morning sun will find only my earthly tenement here. My spirit will have wung its way to the realms of eternal day."

"O, do not talk that way," sobbed Geraldine, filling her apron full of large, irregular fragments of grief. "It cannot, must not be!"

"Do not be over confident," said Pumpkin Jim. "Few men would have lived as I have with a rib running through the centre of the liver, and into the ground for nine or ten inches without great difficulty. The secret of my power of endurance, I will, however, confide to you, as this may be positively my last appearance. My true name is not Pumpkin Jim; that is only a nom de plume. My sure enough name is Jesse James—that is the secret of my longevity. I have been killed a great deal. I have lost my life in almost every State in the Union. At first it used to make me gloomy and taciturn to be killed so much; but latterly I became very much pleased and flattered by this attention. It is sad to think, however, that after being killed by some of our most prominent men, I should at last yield up the ghost in a lonely canon, at the urgent solicitation of a narrow-guage mule. But enough; it is useless to repine. All that I am kicking about is, that after dying in so many different styles, and in such desirable conditions, surrounded by all the comforts of civilization, and getting a large amount of newspaper space, and having a patent medicine portrait of myself published in the papers, I should succumb to the death-dealing jackass, in the solitude of the mountains.

"I cannot die again, however, without telling you of my love. I might occupy your time by telling you of my long and glittering career of crime, but it would take too long. I have nothing to lay at your feet but my untarnished record as a highway robber, and my all consuming love.

"It would ease the pain of my dying hour if you were to say to me that you returned my love."

Our hero then fell back upon the mossy bank and gasped for breath, while to all appearances the last moments of Pumpkin Jim had come.

It was a trying time for a young thing like Geraldine to pass through. She stooped over him and fanned him with her sun bonnet and whispered a few low musical words in his ear.

That did the business.