d up before he went on. Through the black
coating on his face, he appeared thoughtful.

"Best time to see The Lily and get action is at night. All the
day-shift men hang around the camp then, and, besides that, they've
got a new batch of placer ground about a mile and a half over the
other side, and lots of them fellers come over. Want to go to-day?"

The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then Dick
said: "Yes. I think the sooner the better."

Bells Park pulled the visor of his greasy little cap lower over his
eyes, and stepped to the door.

"Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down to
the Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back of
the last shanty on the right-hand side. You see that gap up yonder?
Not the big one, but the narrow one." He pointed with a grimy hand.
"Well, you go right through that and drop down, and you'll see the
camp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it's
just about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home by
moonlight."

Without further ceremony or advice, he returned into the boiler-room,
and the partners, after but slight preparations, began their journey.

It was a stiff climb! The sun had set, and the long twilight was
giving way to darkness when they came down the trail into the upper
end of the camp. Some embryo artist was painfully overworking an
accordion, while a dog rendered melancholy by the unmusical noise,
occasionally accompanied him with prolonged howls. A belated ore
trailer, with the front wagon creaking under the whine of the brakes
and the chains of the six horses clanking, lurched down from a road on
the far side of the long, straggling street, and passed them, the
horses' heads hanging as if overwork had robbed them of all
stable-going spirit of eagerness.

The steady, booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill
on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and
chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they
passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident
voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty
effort to be pathetic.

"Seems right homelike! Don't it?" Bill grinned and chuckled. "That's
one right nice thing about minin'. You can go from Dawson to Chiapas,
and a camp's a camp! Always the same. I reckon if you went up the
street far enough you'd find a Miner's Home Saloon, ma