gone back to its work, and only now and then sent up a man
from the mines below, or sent down a man from the mines above, to
inquire if there was yet any news from the Widow. But not a word was to
be heard.

All these days the two women went and came right through the thick of
the men, but no man there was found rude enough to ask a question.

Never had the camp been so sober. Never had the Forks been so
thoughtful. The cinnamon-headed bar-keeper leaned over his bar and said
confidentially to the man at the table behind the silver faro-box, who
had just awakened from a long nap,

"Ef this 'ere thing keps up, I busts." Then the red-haired man drew a
cork and went on a protracted spree all by himself.

"Send for a gospel sharp all to once, Jake. Let's go the whole hog. The
Forks only wants to get religion now, and die."

CHAPTER XX.

A FLAG OF TRUCE.

How beautiful was all this profound veneration for woman in this wild
Eden! How high and holy the influence of this one woman over these
half-grizzlies, these hairy-faced men who had drunk water from the same
spring with the wild beasts of the Sierras.

Now they would not drink, would hardly shout or speak sharp, while she
lay ill. Whatever was the matter, or the misfortune, they had too much
respect for her, for themselves, to carouse till she should again show
her face, or at least while her life was uncertain.

The fourth day came down into the canon, and sat down there as a sort of
pioneer Summer. Birds flew over the camp from one mountain side to the
other, and sang as they flew. Men whistled old tunes in a dreamy sort of
a way as they came up from their work that day, and recalled other days,
and were boys once more in imagination, away in the world that lay
beyond the Rocky Mountains.

"There is something in this glorious climate of Californy, say what you
will," mused the Judge, as he lit his pipe and sat down on a stump in
the street.

Limber Tim and the cinnamon-haired man had settled down into that
collapse which always follows a protracted spree or a heavy carouse, and
they too sat on their respective stumps out in the open air, while the
saloon was left all to the little brown mice upstairs.

Men were lounging all up and down the street on old knotty logs that no
ax could reduce to firewood, or leaning against the cabins on the warm
sides that were still warm with the sunshine gone away, or loafing up
and down with their pipes in their mou