know what's a pretty color? Now if it was a sack of flour or a
spade--but I'll do my best, Missy," he added meekly, catching her eye
in which the familiar imperiousness gleamed through softening laughter.

Soon the day came when she walked to the door and sat on the bench.
The river was settling decorously into its bed, and in the sunlight the
drenched shores shone under a tracery of pools and rillets as though a
silvery gauze had been rudely torn back from them, catching and tearing
here and there. The men were starting the spring work. The rocker was
up, and the spades and picks stood propped against the rock upon which
she and Low had sat on that first evening. He sat there now, watching
the preparations soon to take part again. His lean hand fingered among
the picks, found his own, and he walked to the untouched shore and
struck a tentative blow. Then he dropped the pick, laughing, and came
back to her.

"I'll be at it in a week," he said, sitting down on the bench. "It'll
be good to be in the pits again and feel my muscles once more."

"It'll be good to see you," she answered.

In a week he was back, in two weeks he was himself again--the mightiest
of those mighty men who, sixty years ago, measured their strength along
the American River. The diggings ran farther upstream and were richer
than the old ones. The day's takings were large, sometimes so large
that the men's elation beat like a fever in their blood. At night they
figured on their wealth, and Susan listened startled to the sums that
fell so readily from their lips. They were rich, rich enough to go to
the coast and for Courant to start in business there.

It was he who wanted this. The old shrinking and fear of the city were
gone. Now, with a wife and child, he turned his face that way. He was
longing to enter the fight for them, to create and acquire for them, to
set them as high as the labor of his hands and work of his brain could
compass. New ambitions possessed him. As Susan planned for a home and
its comforts, he did for his work in the market place in competition
with those who had once been his silent accusers.

But there was also a strange humbleness in him. It did not weaken his
confidence or clog his aspiration, but it took something from the hard
arrogance that had recognized in his own will the only law. He had
heard from Daddy John of that interview with David, and he knew the
reason of David's lie. He knew, too, th