ess," she added, thoughtfully. "She must have died, and that's why he
never looks as gay or goes on larks with the other boys. He just goes on a
lone trail mostly, Dan does. Even his own stepfather don't seem to have
much knowledge about him. Well, well! I always did feel that he had some
sort of trouble lookin' out of them dark eyes of his, and his words to-day
makes it plain to me all at once. Well, well!"

The pensive expression of her face, as it rested on her fat hand, was
evidence that Lorena Jane Huzzard had, after all, found a romance in real
life suited to her fancy, and the unconscious hero was Dan Overton. Poor
Dan!

The grieving hero to whom her thoughts went out was at that moment walking
in a most prosaic, lazy fashion down the main thoroughfare of the
settlement. The road led down to the Ferry from seemingly nowhere in
particular, for from the Ferry on both sides of the river the road
dwindled into mere trails that slipped away into the wildernesses--trails
traveled by few of the white race until a few short years ago, and then
only by the most daring of hunters, or the most persevering of the
gold-seekers.

In the paths where gold is found the dwellings of man soon follow, and the
quickly erected shanties and more pretentious buildings of Sinna Ferry had
grown there as evidence that the precious metals in that region were no
longer visionary things of the enthusiasts, but veritable facts. The men
who came to it along the water, or over the inland trails, were all in
some way connected with the opening up of the new mining fields.

Overton himself had drifted up there as an independent prospector, two
years before. Then, when works were got under way all along that river and
lake region, when a reliable man was needed by the transfer company to
get specie to their men for pay-days, it was Overton to whom was given the
responsibility.

Various responsible duties he had little by little shouldered, until, as
Lyster said, he seemed a necessity to a large area, yet he had not quite
abandoned the dreams with which he had entered those cool Northern lands.
Some day, when the country was more settled and transportation easier, it
was his intention to slip again up into the mountains, along some little
streams he knew, and work out there in quietness his theories as to where
the gold was to be found.

Meantime, he was contented enough with his lot. No vaulting ambition
touched him. He was merely a ranger of