nd the foremost of them clustered round
Devine, who sat just outside the fern, while Saunders, whose face
showed a trifle drawn in the moonlight, stood still clutching the
rifle.

"What's the matter? You're not looking pert, the pair of you," said
one of them.

"Give me a cigar, if you've got one," said Devine. "Saunders will tell
you about the thing. I've done quite enough talking for one night."

Saunders told the story tersely, and afterward snapped the magazine of
his rifle up and down with a dramatic gesture.

"Held them off with that, and not a blame ca'tridge in the thing," he
said.

CHAPTER XXVII

SAUNDERS TAKES PRECAUTIONS

The men from the settlement had been three weeks in camp. Saunders sat
with his back to a big fir and a little hammer in his hand. There was
a pile of shattered quartz at one side of him and another smaller heap
of fragments of the same material lying on an empty flour-bag at his
feet. Devine, who had just announced that dinner was almost ready,
leaned against a neighboring fir, looking on with a suggestive grin;
and a big, gaunt, old-time prospector, with a grim, bronzed face, was
carefully poising one of the quartz lumps in a horny hand. Saunders,
who had been at work since daylight that morning, had paid the latter
six dollars for his services, and admitted that he was highly
satisfied with the result. He was then engaged in manufacturing
specimens.

There was already a change in the forest surrounding the lonely camp.
The willows had been hewn down, great firs lay in swaths, with some of
their mighty branches burnt, and a track of ruin stretched back from
Saunders' tent to the side of the range. The Grenfell Consolidated
Mine, three separate claims, occupied what was supposed to be the
richest of the land. It was certainly the most accessible portion, for
payable milling ore was already being extracted from an open cut. It
was not the fault of Saunders that the Consolidated did not occupy the
whole of it, but the law allows each free miner only so many feet of
frontage, and the Gold Commissioner had shown himself proof against
the surveyor's reasoning that, as Grenfell had found the mine, a
fourth location should be recorded in the name of his executors. A
dead man, as the Commissioner pointed out, could not record a mineral
claim.

The men from the settlement had, however, promptly staked off every
remaining rod of ground along the lead, and, though the spot was
re