. Then she waved her hand
carelessly--slightingly, he felt in his misery--and went down the
steep slope.

Until he could no longer see the crown of her hat he looked after her.
Then, the sickness of his terrible loneliness upon him again, he
turned and slowly climbed back to his glass-walled prison.

CHAPTER NINE

LIKE THE BOY HE WAS

Down the balsam and manzanita slope toward the little valley where she
lived, Jack stared hungrily during many an empty, dragging hour. Until
the darkness had twice drawn down the black curtain that shut him away
from the world, he had hoped she would come. She had been so friendly,
so understandingly sympathetic--she must know how long the days were
up there.

On the third day Hank came riding up the trail that sought the easiest
slopes. He brought coal-oil and bacon and coffee and smoking tobacco
and the week's accumulation of newspapers, and three magazines; but he
did not bring any word from Marion Rose, nor the magazines she had
promised. When Hank had unsaddled the horses to rest their backs, and
had eaten his lunch and had smoked a cigarette in the shade of a rock,
his slow thoughts turned to the gossip of his little world.

He told of the latest encounter with the crabbed fireman on Claremont,
grinning appreciatively because the fireman's ill temper had been
directed at a tourist who had gone up with Hank. He related a small
scandal that was stirring the social pond of Quincy, and at last he
swung nearer to the four who had taken mining claims along Toll Gate
Creek.

"Too bad you can't go down to Toll-house an' git acquainted with your
neighbors," he drawled half maliciously. "There's a girl in the bunch
that's sure easy to look at. Other one is an old maid--looks too much
like a schoolma'm to suit me. But say--I'm liable to make a trip up
here twice a week, from now on! I'm liable to eat my dinner 'fore I
git here, too. Some class to that girl, now, believe me! Only trouble
is, I'm kinda afraid one of the men has got a string on her. There's
two of 'em in the outfit. One is one of them he schoolma'ms that goes
around in a boiled shirt and a hard-boiled hat, buzzin' like a
mosquito. He's sweet on the old maid. It's the other one I'm leery of.
He's the brother of the old maid, and he's the kind that don't say
much but does a lot uh thinkin'. Big, too.

"They've took up a bunch of minin' claims around there and are livin'
in that cabin. Goin' to winter there, the o