loveliness! Here and
there the moon had laid her calm face on lake and overflow, and gone to
sleep embracing them, until the whole plain seemed to be lifted into
infinite quiet. Walking on as in a dream, the black, impenetrable
barriers of skirting thickets opened and gave way to vague distances
that it appeared impossible to reach, dim vistas that seemed
unapproachable. Gradually he seemed himself to become a part of the
mysterious night. He was becoming as pulseless, as calm, as
passionless.

What was that? A shot in the direction of the cabin! yet so faint, so
echoless, so ineffective in the vast silence, that he would have
thought it his fancy but for the strange instinctive jar upon his
sensitive nerves. Was it an accident, or was it an intentional signal
to him? He stopped; it was not repeated, the silence reasserted itself,
but this time with an ominous deathlike suggestion. A sudden and
terrible thought crossed his mind. He cast aside his pack and all
encumbering weight, took a deep breath, lowered his head, and darted
like a deer in the direction of the challenge.

II.

The exodus of the seceding partners of the Lone Star claim had been
scarcely an imposing one. For the first five minutes after quitting the
cabin the procession was straggling and vagabond. Unwonted exertion had
exaggerated the lameness of some, and feebleness of moral purpose had
predisposed the others to obtrusive musical exhibition. Union Mills
limped and whistled with affected abstraction; the Judge whistled and
limped with affected earnestness. The Right Bower led the way with some
show of definite design; the Left Bower followed with his hands in his
pockets. The two feebler natures, drawn together in unconscious
sympathy, looked vaguely at each other for support.

"You see," said the Judge, suddenly, as if triumphantly concluding an
argument, "there ain't anything better for a young fellow than
independence. Nature, so to speak, points the way. Look at the
animals."

"There's a skunk hereabouts," said Union Mills, who was supposed to be
gifted with aristocratically sensitive nostrils, "within ten miles of
this place; like as not crossing the Ridge. It's always my luck to
happen out just at such times. I don't see the necessity anyhow of
trapesing round the claim now, if we calculate to leave it to-night."

Both men waited to observe if the suggestion was taken up by the Right
and Left Bower moodily plodding ahead. No response fo