ons at nights crowded with
faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and
the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and
their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and
sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the
falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the
hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and
then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened
and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she
could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the
men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their
work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could
make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole
subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash
the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to
speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth,
and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so
often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after
that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading
a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead
tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in
the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and
forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or
cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the
hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was
no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and
wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of
all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived
at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite
suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to
town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the
old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun
growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink
light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the
grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a
faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There wo