the camp.

The incident, however, passed unnoticed by the faro players; not a man
within sound of the shot, for that matter, inquired what the trouble
was about; and even Nick, picking up his tray filled with glasses and a
bottle, walked straightway into the dance-hall looking as if the matter
were not worth a moment's thought.

At Nick's going the Indian's face brightened; it gave him the
opportunity for which he had been waiting. Nobly he maintained his
reputation as a thief by quietly going behind the bar and lifting from
a box four cigars which he stowed away in his pockets. But even that,
apparently did not satisfy him, for when he espied the butt of a cigar,
flung into the sawdust on the floor by a man who had just come in, he
picked it up before squatting down again to resume his card playing.

The newcomer, a man of, say, forty years, came slowly into the
room without a word of salutation to anyone. In common with his
fellow-miners, he wore a flannel shirt and boots. The latter gave every
evidence of age as did his clothes which, nevertheless, were neat.
His face wore a mild, gentle look and would have said that he was
companionable enough; yet it was impossible not to see that he was not
willingly seeking the cheer of the saloon but came there solely because
he had no other place to go. In a word, he had every appearance of a man
down on his luck.

Men were continually coming in and going out, but no one paid the
slightest attention to him, even though a succession of audible sighs
escaped his lips. At length he went over to the counter and took a sheet
or two of the paper,--which was kept there for the few who desired to
write home,--a quill-pen and ink; and picking up a small wooden box he
seated himself upon it before a desk--which had been built from a rude
packing-case--and began wearily and laboriously to write.

"The lone star now rises!"

It was the stentorian voice of the caller of the wheel-of-fortune.
One would have thought that the sound would have had the effect of a
thunder-clap upon the figure at the desk; but he gave no sign whatever
of having heard it; nor did he see the suspicious glance which Nick,
entering at that moment, shot at Billy Jackrabbit who was stealing
noiselessly towards the dance-hall where the whoops were becoming so
frequent and evincing such exuberance of spirits that the ubiquitous, if
generally unconcerned, Nick felt it incumbent to give an explanation of
them.

"