ars very pointed, critical eye cocked, asking as plain as
could be, "You wake me up and drag me out here into the heat and
mosquitoes just to watch you doin' that? Well, I've my opinion of you."

"Colonel gone down?" inquired the Silesian, passing by.

"Not yet."

"Anything I can do?" the gentleman inside was saying with a sound of
effort in his voice. The lady was not even at the pains to notice the
perfunctory civility.

"Well, Colonel, now you're here, what do you think o' the Klondyke?"

"Think? Well, there's no doubt they've taken a lot o' gold out o'
here."

"Reg'lar old Has Been, hey?"

"Oh, I don't say it hasn't got a future."

"What! Don't you know the boom's busted?"

"Well, no."

"Has. Tax begun it. Too many cheechalkos are finishing it. Klondyke?"
She laughed. "The Klondyke's goin' to hell down-grade in a hand-car."

Scowl Austin was up, ready, as usual, to relieve Seymour of half the
superintending, but never letting him off duty till he had seen the new
shift at work. As the Boy limped by with the German, Austin turned his
scowl significantly towards the Colonel's tent.

"Good-mornin'--good-night, I mean," laughed the lame man, just as if
his tongue had not run away with him the last time the two had met. It
was not often that anyone spoke so pleasantly to the owner of No. 0.
Perhaps the circumstance weighed with him; at all events, he stopped
short. When the German had gone on, "Foot's better," Austin asserted.

"Perhaps it is a little," though the lame man had no reason to think
so.

"Lucky you heal quick. Most people don't up here--livin' on the stale
stuff we get in this----country. Seymour said anything to you about a
job?"

"No."

"Well, since you're on time, you better come on the night shift,
instead o' that lazy friend o' yours."

"Oh, he ain't lazy--been up hours. An old acquaintance dropped in;
he'll be down in a minute."

"'Tisn't only his bein' late. You better come on the shift."

"Don't think I could do that. What's the matter?"

"Don't say there's anything very much the matter yet. But he's sick,
ain't he?"

"Sick? No, except as we all are--sick o' the eternal glare."

The Colonel was coming slowly down the hill. Of course, a man doesn't
look his best if he hasn't slept. The Boy limped a little way back to
meet him.

"Anything the matter with you, Colonel?"

"Well, my Bonanza headache ain't improved."

"I suppose you wouldn' like me to take over the job for