eligious occupation before. But I shouldn't wonder if you're right,
Barker boy. So let's liquor up."

Nevertheless he did not move, nor did the others. The fire leaped
higher, bringing out the rude rafters and sternly economic details of
the rough cabin, and making the occupants in their seats before the fire
look gigantic by contrast.

"Who shut the door?" said Demorest after a pause.

"I did," said Barker. "I reckoned it was getting cold."

"Better open it again, now that the fire's blazing. It will light the
way if any of the men from below want to drop in this evening."

Stacy stared at his companion. "I thought that it was understood that
we were giving them that dinner at Boomville tomorrow night, so that we
might have the last evening here by ourselves in peace and quietness?"

"Yes, but if any one DID want to come it would seem churlish to shut him
out," said Demorest.

"I reckon you're feeling very much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good
fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he
continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile
in the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by--by its
specific gravity, I calculate--and sort of crampy and twitchy in the
legs, as if I ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds
me here. All the same, I doubt if anybody will come up--except from
curiosity. Our luck has made them rather sore down the hill, for all
they're coming to the dinner to-morrow."

"That's only human nature," said Demorest.

"But," said Barker eagerly, "what does it mean? Why, only this
afternoon, when I was passing the 'Old Kentuck' tunnel, where those
Marshalls have been grubbing along for four years without making a
single strike, I felt ashamed to look at them, and as they barely nodded
to me I slinked by as if I had done them an injury. I don't understand
it."

"It somehow does not seem to square with this 'gift of God' idea of
yours, does it?" said Stacy. "But we'll open the door and give them a
show."

As he did so it seemed as if the night were their only guest, and had
been waiting on the threshold to now enter bodily and pervade all things
with its presence. With that cool, fragrant inflow of air they breathed
freely. The red edge had gone from Black Spur, but it was even more
clearly defined against the sky in its towering blackness. The
sky itself had grown lighter, although the stars still seemed mere
reflection