ncile the peculiar resolution, even hardness of the expression with
the soft, well-moulded features and the sweet youthful lips full of
freshness and colour. The miners took very little notice of her, and she
certainly made no effort to attract it, leaning listlessly against the
bar with one elbow on the counter, a silent and motionless spectator of
all this excited eager humanity. There was no thought in their mind, no
word on their lips just then but gold. Gold! gold! The thought possessed
them with a grip on their brains like the grip of fever on the body, and
the word sounded pleasant as the sweetest music to their ears. Gold! The
syllable went round and passed from mouth to mouth, till the very air
seemed to be getting a yellow tint above the grey fumes of tobacco.

Amongst the last batch of incomers was a slim young fellow of twenty odd
years, and when he had worked his way with difficulty up to the crowded
counter, he found himself near the girl's corner. She looked at him,
letting her dark eyes wander critically over his face. He formed a
strong contrast to the figures around him, being slight and delicate in
build, with a pale good-looking face that had a tender sympathetic
expression like a woman's. Feeling the girl's gaze upon him, he glanced
her way, and then having looked once, looked again. After a series of
glances between drinks from his glass, the furtive looks began to amuse
the girl, and the next time their eyes met she laughed openly, and they
both spoke simultaneously.

"You're a new comer, aren't you?" she said.

"I haven't seen you here before," was his remark.

"You might have done, I should think," answered the girl carelessly;
"but I don't come here very often, although my father is running this
place."

"Are you Poniatovsky's daughter?" he asked in surprise, unable to
connect this splendid young creature with the ugly little Pole he knew
as the proprietor of the saloon.

The girl nodded. "Yes, Katrine Poniatovsky is my name--what's yours?"

"Stephen Wood," he answered meekly.

"What have you come here for--mining?" she asked next. Although her
queries were direct there was nothing rude in the fresh young voice
making them.

The young fellow coloured deeply, the rush of blood passed over his face
up to his light smooth hair and deep down into his neck till it was lost
beneath his coat collar.

"No--yes--that is--well, I mean--I do mine now," he stammered after a
minute.

The girl