said nothing, and when Stephen glanced around at her he saw she
was regarding him with astonished eyes under elevated eyebrows. This
expression made the pretty oval face fairly beautiful, and the young
man's heart opened to her.

"I came with the intention of doing some good here amongst the
people--in a missionary, religious way I mean, but"--and he stopped
again in painful embarrassment.

Katrine laughed.

"For the present you've laid religion aside and you're going to do a
little mining and make a fortune, and then the religion can be taken up
again," she said.

The young fellow only flushed deeper and turned his glass around
nervously on the counter.

"That's all right," the girl said soothingly, after a second. "This
place is a corner of the world where we all are different from what we
are anywhere else. As soon as men come here they get changed. They
forget everything else and just go in for gold. It's a sort of madness
that's in the air. You'd be able to missionise somewhere else all right,
but here you are obliged just to dig like the rest, you can't help it.
Got a claim?"

The young man's face paled again.

"Yes," he answered in a low tone. "It was the claim that tempted me.
It's one of the best, I believe, over in the west gulch, only about ten
miles from here."

There was a pressing movement round them as some fresh miners came
pushing their way through to the bar, and Stephen and Katrine moved
away, to make room for them, towards the wall of the room; they put
their backs against it and looked over the mass of moving heads towards
the door.

"Look at this fellow coming in now," Stephen said to his companion
suddenly, as the door swung open, to a mist of whirling whiteness, and
two or three men entered: "Henry Talbot. He has the claim next mine in
the gulch. He has just struck a fresh lot of gold, and he'll soon be one
of the richest men here."

The girl craned her neck to get a good view between the intervening
heads, and though she had not been told which of the incoming figures
to look at, she fixed her eyes as if by instinct on the right one. A man
of rather tall, slight figure, pale face, and marked features. He made
his way towards the bar, and then catching Stephen's signals to him, he
smiled and came their way.

"What are you doing down here?" he said, speaking to Stephen but looking
at Katrine, who in her turn was scanning his face closely.

"Why, enjoying Miss Poniatovsky's society