p bank; but
swiftly as he moved, she caught him and clung to him, half sobbing.

"Don't go! Oh, Dan, let him go!" she begged, and her grasp made it
impossible for him to go unless he picked her up and carried her along.

He stooped, took her head roughly in his hands, and turned her face up, so
that the light would fall upon it.

"_Him!_ Then you know who it is?" he said, grimly. "What sort of business
is this, 'Tana? Are you going to tell me?"

But she only crouched closer to him, and, sobbing, begged him not to go.
Once he tried to break away but lost his footing, and the soil and bits of
boulders went clattering down past her.

With a muttered oath of impatience, he gave up the pursuit, and stared
down at her with an expression more bitter than any she had ever seen on
his face before.

"So you are bound to protect him, are you?" he asked, coldly. "Very well.
But if you value him so highly you had better keep him clear of this camp,
else he'll find himself ready for a box. Come! get up and go to the tents.
That is a better place for you than here. Your coming out here this
evening has been a mistake all around--or else mine has. I wish to Heaven
I could undo it all."

She stood a little apart from him, but her hand was still outstretched and
clasping his arm.

"All, Dan?" she asked, and her mouth trembled. But his own lips were firm
enough, as he nodded his head and looked at her.

"All," he said briefly. "Go now; and here are your flowers for which you
hunted so long in the woods."

He stooped to pick them up for her from where they had fallen--the white,
fragrant things he had thought so beautiful as she came toward him with
them in the moonlight.

But as he lifted them from the bank, where they were scattered, he saw
something else there which was neither beautiful nor fragrant, but over
which he bent with earnest scrutiny. An ordinary looking piece of shale or
stone it would have seemed to an inexperienced eye, a thing with irregular
veins of a greenish appearance, and the green dotted plainly with
yellow--so plainly as to show even in the moonlight the nature of the
find.

He turned to the girl and reached it to her with the flowers.

"There! When my foot slipped I broke off that bit of 'float' from the
ledge," he said curtly. "Show it to Harris. We have found the gold ore,
and I'll stake out the claims to-night. You can afford to leave for
civilization now as soon as you please, I reckon, for yo