ings of hunger with biscuits from a barrel and slices of smoked
herring from a box. Their equally singular host, accepting their
conduct as not unusual, joined the circle they had comfortably drawn
round the fireplace, and meditatively kicking a brand back at the fire,
said, without looking at them:--

"Well?"

"Well!" returned the leader, leaning back in his chair after carefully
unloosing the buckle of his belt, but with his eyes also on the
fire,--"well! we've prospected every yard of outcrop along the Divide,
and there ain't the ghost of a silver indication anywhere."

"Not a smell," added the close-shaven guest, without raising his eyes.

They all remained silent, looking at the fire, as if it were the one
thing they had taken into their confidence. Collinson also addressed
himself to the blaze as he said presently: "It allus seemed to me that
thar was something shiny about that ledge just round the shoulder of
the spur, over the long canyon."

The leader ejaculated a short laugh. "Shiny, eh? shiny! Ye think THAT
a sign? Why, you might as well reckon that because Key's head, over
thar, is gray and silvery that he's got sabe and experience." As he
spoke he looked towards the man with a pleasant voice. The fire
shining full upon him revealed the singular fact that while his face
was still young, and his mustache quite dark, his hair was perfectly
gray. The object of this attention, far from being disconcerted by the
comparison, added with a smile:--

"Or that he had any silver in his pocket."

Another lapse of silence followed. The wind tore round the house and
rumbled in the short, adobe chimney.

"No, gentlemen," said the leader reflectively, "this sort o' thing is
played out. I don't take no more stock in that cock-and-bull story
about the lost Mexican mine. I don't catch on to that Sunday-school
yarn about the pious, scientific sharp who collected leaves and
vegetables all over the Divide, all the while he scientifically knew
that the range was solid silver, only he wouldn't soil his fingers with
God-forsaken lucre. I ain't saying anything agin that fine-spun theory
that Key believes in about volcanic upheavals that set up on end
argentiferous rock, but I simply say that I don't see it--with the
naked eye. And I reckon it's about time, boys, as the game's up, that
we handed in our checks, and left the board."

There was another silence around the fire, another whirl and turmoil
without. T