Never goin' to, I s'pose."

"Oh, I don't know," he laughed, and turned his head over his shoulder
to the curious scene between them and the bar. It was suddenly as if he
had never seen it before; then, while Maudie waited, a little scornful,
a little kind, his eyes went through the window to the pink and orange
sunrise. As some change came over the Colonel's face, "She died!" said
Maudie.

"No--no--she didn't die;" then half to himself, half to forestall
Maudie's crude probing, "but I lost her," he finished.

"Oh, you lost her!"

He stood, looking past the ugliness within to the morning majesty
without. But it was not either that he saw. Maudie studied him.

"Guess you ain't give up expectin' to find her some day?"

"No--no, not quite."

"Humph! Did you guess you'd find her here?"

"No," and his absent smile seemed to remove him leagues away. "No, not
here."

"I could a' told you----" she began savagely. "I don't know for certain
whether any--what you call good women come up here, but I'm dead sure
none stay."

"When do you leave for home, Maudie?" he said gently.

But at the flattering implication the oddest thing happened. As she
stood there, with her fists full of gold, Maudie's eyes filled. She
turned abruptly and went out. The crowd began to melt away. In half an
hour only those remained who had more hootch than they could carry off
the premises. They made themselves comfortable on the floor, near the
stove, and the greatest night Minook had known was ended.

CHAPTER XVIII

A MINERS' MEETING

"Leiden oder triumphiren Hammer oder Amboss sein."--Goethe.

In a good-sized cabin, owned by Bonsor, down near the A. C., Judge
Corey was administering Miners' Law. The chief magistrate was already a
familiar figure, standing on his dump at Little Minook, speculatively
chewing and discussing "glayshal action," but most of the time at the
Gold Nugget, chewing still, and discussing more guardedly the action
some Minook man was threatening to bring against another. You may treat
a glacier cavalierly, but Miners' Law is a serious matter. Corey was
sitting before a deal table, littered with papers strewn round a
central bottle of ink, in which a steel pen stuck upright. The Judge
wore his usual dilapidated business suit of brown cheviot that had once
been snuff-coloured and was now a streaky drab. On his feet, stretched
out under the magisterial table till they joined the jury, a pair of
moccasins; on hi