ir of gold scales. A fire burned in the
stove. The long-lingering sunlight poured through the "turkey-red" that
she had tacked up for a half-curtain, and over this, one saw the
slouch-hats and fur caps of the outside crowd.

Clutching Judge Corey by the arm, Maudie pulled him after her into the
narrow space behind the head-board and the wall.

"It was here--see?" She stooped down.

Some of the men pulled the bed farther out, so that they, too, could
pass round and see.

"This piece o' board goes down so slick you'd never know it lifted
out." She fitted it in with shaking hands, and then with her nails and
a hairpin got it out. "And way in, underneath, I had this box. I always
set it on a flat stone." She spoke as if this oversight were the
thief's chief crime. "See? Like that."

She fitted the cigar-box into unseen depths of space and then brought
it out again, wet and muddy. The ground was full of springs hereabouts,
and the thaw had loosed them.

"Boys!" She stood up and held out the box. "Boys! it was full."

Eloquently she turned it upside down.

"How much do you reckon you had?" She handed the muddy box to the
nearest sympathiser, sat down on the fur-covered bed, and wiped her
eyes.

"Any idea?"

"I weighed it all over again after I got in from the Gold Nugget the
night we went on the stampede."

As she sobbed out the list of her former possessions, Judge Corey took
it down on the back of a dirty envelope. So many ounces of dust, so
many in nuggets, so much in bills and coin, gold and silver. Each item
was a stab.

"Yes, all that--all that!" she jumped up wildly, "and it's gone! But we
got to find it. What you hangin' round here for? Why, if you boys had
any natchral spunk you'd have the thief strung up by now."

"We got to find him fust."

"You won't find him standin' here."

They conferred afresh.

"It must have been somebody who knowed where you kept the stuff."

"N-no." Her red eyes wandered miserably, restlessly, to the window.
Over the red half-curtain French Charlie and Butts looked in. They had
not been to the meeting.

Maudie's face darkened as she caught sight of the Canadian.

"Oh, yes, you can crow over me now," she shouted shrilly above the buzz
of comment and suggestion. The Canadian led the way round to the door,
and the two men crowded in.

"You just get out," Maudie cried in a fury. "Didn't I turn you out o'
this and tell you never----"

"Hol' on," said French Charlie i