ulent
water-course. A few clouds lazily huddled in the west apparently had
gone to rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies. There was a
gleam as of golden water everywhere along the horizon, washing out the
cold snowpeaks, and drowning even the rising moon. The creek caught it
here and there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken
sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian stream they had
been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some peculiar trick
of the atmosphere, the perfect plenitude of that golden sunset glory
was lavished on the rugged sides and tangled crest of the Lone Star
mountain. That isolated peak, the landmark of their claim, the gaunt
monument of their folly, transfigured in the evening splendor, kept its
radiance unquenched long after the glow had fallen from the encompassing
skies, and when at last the rising moon, step by step, put out the fires
along the winding valley and plains, and crept up the bosky sides of
the canyon, the vanishing sunset was lost only to reappear as a golden
crown.

The eyes of the young man were fixed upon it with more than a momentary
picturesque interest. It had been the favorite ground of his prospecting
exploits, its lowest flank had been scarred in the old enthusiastic days
with hydraulic engines, or pierced with shafts, but its central position
in the claim and its superior height had always given it a commanding
view of the extent of their valley and its approaches, and it was this
practical pre-eminence that alone attracted him at that moment. He knew
that from its crest he would be able to distinguish the figures of his
companions, as they crossed the valley near the cabin, in the growing
moonlight. Thus he could avoid encountering them on his way to the high
road, and yet see them, perhaps, for the last time. Even in his sense of
injury there was a strange satisfaction in the thought.

The ascent was toilsome, but familiar. All along the dim trail he was
accompanied by gentler memories of the past, that seemed, like the faint
odor of spiced leaves and fragrant grasses wet with the rain and crushed
beneath his ascending tread, to exhale the sweeter perfume in his effort
to subdue or rise above them. There was the thicket of manzanita, where
they had broken noonday bread together; here was the rock beside their
maiden shaft, where they had poured a wild libation in boyish enthusiasm
of success; and here the ledge where their