at he said, lost in her perfect content.

"When we've got the gold we'll take up land and I'll build a house for
you, a good house, my wife won't live in a tent. It'll be of logs,
strong and water tight, and as soon as they bring things in--and the
ships will be coming soon--we'll furnish it well. And that'll be only
the beginning."

"Where will we build it?" she said, catching his enthusiasm and
straining her eyes as if then and there to pick out the spot.

"By the river under a pine."

"With a place for Daddy John," she cried, stretching a hand toward the
old man. "He must be there too."

He took it and stood linked to the embracing pair by the girl's warm
grasp.

"I'll stick by the tent," he said; "no four walls for me."

"And you two," she looked from one to the other, "will wash for the
gold and I'll take care of you. I'll keep everything clean and
comfortable. It'll be a cozy little home--our log house under the
pine."

She laughed, the first time in many weeks, and the clear sound rang
joyously.

"And when we've got all the dust we want," Courant went on, his spirit
expanding on the music of her laughter, "we'll go down to the coast.
They'll have a town there soon for the shipping. We'll grow up with
it, build it into a city, and as it gets richer so will we. It's going
to be a new empire, out here by the Pacific, with the gold rivers back
of it and the ocean in front. And it's going to be ours."

She looked over the foreground of hill and vale to the shimmering sweep
of the rich still land. Her imagination, wakened by his words, passed
from the log house to the busy rush of a city where the sea shone
between the masts of ships. It was a glowing future they were to march
on together, with no cloud to mar it now that she had seen the new look
in his eyes.

A few days later they were in the Sacramento Valley camped near the
walls of Sutter's Fort. The plain, clad with a drab grass, stretched
to where the low-lying Sacramento slipped between oozy banks. Here
were the beginnings of a town, shacks and tents dumped down in a helter
skelter of slovenly hurry. Beyond, the American river crept from the
mountains and threaded the parched land. Between the valley and the
white sky-line of the Sierra, the foot hills swelled, indented with
ravines and swathed in the matted robe of the chaparral.

While renewing their supplies at the fort they camped under a live oak.
It was a mighty growth, its d