lness reigned again over the smoky interior.

The low trestles on which the men lay were hard and unyielding, and a
doubled-up blanket makes a poor mattress; the air of the cabin was thick
and heavy, and the stove, which was close to Talbot's head, having been
stuffed to its utmost capacity with damp wood that it might burn through
the night, let out thin spirals of acrid smoke from all its cracks.
Stephen did not close his eyes long after they had lain down, and there
was utter silence in the place except for heavy breathings. He lay with
open eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying
thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily
fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute
singleness of aim and hope and purpose, fell into a deep and tranquil
sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work;
the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he
might work again on the morrow.

When the faint grey light of morning came creeping into the low and
narrow room, which was not very early, as the nights now were far longer
than the days, Talbot was the first of the sleepers to awake. He
refilled the stove, which had burned down in the long night hours, and
then let himself out.

When he returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen
sitting up on his trestle rubbing his red and weary-looking eyes.

"Well, pardner, what are you going to do to-day?" he asked a few minutes
later, when they had the cabin to themselves for a moment.

"Going to do?" replied Talbot in astonishment, looking up from turning
the coffee into the coffee-pot, according to Bill's orders. "Why, if we
collect together all the stores we want, and get back to the diggings
this afternoon, we shall have about enough to do."

"Oh, I meant about the girl."

"What girl?" queried Talbot, now standing still and staring Stephen in
the face.

"The girl you danced with last night--the saloon-keeper's daughter,
Katrine Poniatovsky--do you want any more identification?" returned
Stephen, sarcastically, opening his heavy lids a little wider.

"Well, _what_ about her?" returned Talbot, looking at him expectantly.

"Oh, well, I didn't know; I thought perhaps we wouldn't go back to-day,
that's all," answered Stephen, rather sheepishly.

To his sympathetic, impulsive nature, open to every new impression,
easily distracted like the butterfly which may