ere he
is, the only man among us that has his future fixed and his preemption
lines laid out and registered. He's already got a girl that he's going
to marry and settle down with on the strength of his luck. And I'd like
to know what Kitty Carter, when she's Mrs. Barker, would say to her
husband being signaled for from Asia or Africa. I don't seem to see her
tumbling to any password. And when he and she go into a new partnership,
I reckon she'll let the old one slide."

"That's just where you're wrong!" said Barker, with quickly rising
color. "She's the sweetest girl in the world, and she'd be sure to
understand our feelings. Why, she thinks everything of you two; she was
just eager for you to get this claim, which has put us where we are,
when I held back, and if it hadn't been for her, by Jove! we wouldn't
have had it."

"That was only because she cared for YOU," returned Stacy, with a
half-yawn; "and now that you've got YOUR share she isn't going to take
a breathless interest in US. And, by the way, I'd rather YOU'D remind us
that we owe our luck to her than that SHE should ever remind YOU of it."

"What do you mean?" said Barker quickly. But Demorest here rose lazily,
and, throwing a gigantic shadow on the wall, stood between the two with
his back to the fire. "He means," he said slowly, "that you're talking
rot, and so is he. However, as yours comes from the heart and his from
the head, I prefer yours. But you're both making me tired. Let's have a
fresh deal."

Nobody ever dreamed of contradicting Demorest. Nevertheless, Barker
persisted eagerly: "But isn't it better for us to look at this
cheerfully and happily all round? There's nothing criminal in our having
made a strike! It seems to me, boys, that of all ways of making money
it's the squarest and most level; nobody is the poorer for it; our luck
brings no misfortune to others. The gold was put there ages ago for
anybody to find; we found it. It hasn't been tarnished by man's touch
before. I don't know how it strikes you, boys, but it seems to me
that of all gifts that are going it is the straightest. For whether we
deserve it or not, it comes to us first-hand--from God!"

The two men glanced quickly at the speaker, whose face flushed and then
smiled embarrassedly as if ashamed of the enthusiasm into which he had
been betrayed. But Demorest did not smile, and Stacy's eyes shone in the
firelight as he said languidly, "I never heard that prospecting was a
r