iver covered her up with a
blanket, which so smothered her that she awakened, and started up
gasping for breath. The feeling of suffocation continuing, she stole
softly to the door, and opening it, let the chilly night air blow over
her. Most persons would have found Mr. Hastings' house freely
ventilated, but some way poor Alice found it hard to breathe in it.

The summer was passing; times grew, if possible, harder than before. The
prospectors, who had found plenty of "leads," had spent their "bottom
dollar" in opening them up and in waiting for purchasers, and were going
back to California any way they could. The capitalists were holding off,
satisfied that in the end all the valuable mines would fall into their
hands, and caring nothing how fared the brave but unlucky discoverers.
In fact, they overshot themselves, and made hard times for their own
mills, the miners having to stop getting out rock.

Then Jack lost his situation. Very soon food began to be scarce in the
cabin of Mr. Hastings. Scanty as it was, it was more than Alice craved;
or rather, it was not what she craved. If she ate for a day or two, for
the next two or three days she suffered with nausea and aversion to
anything which the outside kitchen afforded. Jack seldom mentioned his
mine now, and looked haggard and hopeless. The conversation between her
husband and Dr. Earle, recorded elsewhere, had been overheard by Alice,
lying half conscious; and she had never forgotten the threat about
blowing out his brains in case he failed to sell his mine. Trifling as
such an apprehension may appear to another, it is not unlikely that it
had its effect to keep up her nervous condition. The summer was
going--was gone. Mrs. Hastings had not met Dr. Earle for several weeks;
and, despite herself, when the worst fears oppressed her, her first
impulse was to turn to him. It had always seemed so easy for him to do
what he liked!

Perhaps _he_ was growing anxious to know if he could give the
thumb-screw another turn. At all events, he directed his steps toward
Mr. Hastings' house on the afternoon of the last day in August. Mrs.
Hastings received him at the threshold and offered him the
camp-stool--the only chair she had--in the shade outside the door; at
the same time seating herself upon the door-step with the same grace as
if it had been a silken sofa.

She was not daintily dressed this afternoon; for that luxury, like
others, calls for the expenditure of a certai