was certain that they were very doubtful, for they
only shook their heads as a rule when the subject was mentioned now in
the great center. That was a bad sign, and very hard evidence of
displeasure with their patron saint of the Autumn and the long weary
Winter.

The Widow must have known all this. Not that Sandy had said a word
further than she had almost forced him to speak; not that she had yet
ventured down into the Forks, or that Bunker Hill had breathed a word
about it, but I fancy that women know these things by instinct. They
somehow have a singularly clear way of coming upon such things.

Day after day she read Sandy's face as he came up from his mine,
dripping with the yellow water spurted from the sluice all over his
broad slouch hat, long brown beard, and stiff duck breeches; she read it
eagerly as one reads the papers after a battle, and read it truly as if
it had been a broadsheet in print, and found herself in disfavor with
the camp.

Then she began to think if Sandy was thinking of his promise; if he had
remembered, and still remembered the time when in her great agony he
promised, though all the world turned against her and cried "shame!" he
would not upbraid her.

She wondered if he ever wished he had gone when she commanded him and
implored him to go, and she began to read his face for the truth. She
read, read him all through, page after page, chapter after chapter. She
found there was not a doubt in all the realm of his soul, and her face
took on again a little of its gladness. Yet the touch of tenderness
deepened, the old sadness had settled back again, and this time to
remain.

The still blue skies of California were bending over the camp. Not a
cloud sailed east or west, or hovered about the snow-peaks. It was full
Summer-time in the Sierras before it was yet mid-Spring, and men began
to pour over the mountains across the settled and solid banks of snow.
Birds flew low and idly about the cabins, and sang as the men went on
with their work down in the foaming, muddy little rivers, and all the
world seemed glad and strong with life and hope.

Still the Widow was glad no more, and men began to notice that Sandy did
not come to town at all. It was even observed that he had found a
cut-off across the spur of the hill, by which he went and came to and
from his mining claim without once setting foot in the Howling
Wilderness, or even the Forks.

Limber Tim, too, seemed sad and sorely troubled.