gestures of Lance in his
encompassing wig and blanket, and because it helped her to voice her
thought.

"Ye'll never be able to take yer watch at the diamond pit to-night,
Dad," she said; "and I've been reck'nin' you might set the squaw there
instead. I can show her what to do."

But to Flip's momentary discomfiture, her father promptly objected.
"Mebbe I've got suthin' else for her to do. Mebbe I may have my
secrets, too--eh?" he said, with dark significance, at the same time
administering a significant nudge to Lance, which kept up the young
man's exasperation. "No, she'll rest yer a bit just now. I'll set her
to watchin' suthin' else, like as not, when I want her." Flip fell into
one of her suggestive silences. Lance watched her earnestly, mollified
by a single furtive glance from her significant eyes; the rain dashed
against the windows, and occasionally spattered and hissed in the
hearth of the broad chimney, and Mr. David Fairley, somewhat assuaged
by the internal administration of whiskey, grew more loquacious. The
genius of incongruity and inconsistency which generally ruled his
conduct came out with freshened vigor under the gentle stimulation of
spirit. "On an evening like this," he began, comfortably settling
himself on the floor beside the chimney, "ye might rig yerself out in
them new duds and fancy fixin's that that Sacramento shrimp sent ye,
and let your own flesh and blood see ye. If that's too much to do for
your old dad, ye might do it to please that digger squaw as a Christian
act." Whether in the hidden depths of the old man's consciousness there
was a feeling of paternal vanity in showing this wretched aborigine the
value and importance of the treasure she was about to guard, I cannot
say. Flip darted an interrogatory look at Lance, who nodded a quiet
assent, and she flew into the inner room. She did not linger on the
details of her toilet, but reappeared almost the next moment in her new
finery, buttoning the neck of her gown as she entered the room, and
chastely stopping at the window to characteristically pull up her
stocking. The peculiarity of her situation increased her usual shyness;
she played with the black and gold beads of a handsome
necklace--Lance's last gift--as the merest child might; her unbuckled
shoe gave the squaw a natural opportunity of showing her admiration and
devotion by insisting upon buckling it, and gave Lance, under that
disguise, an opportunity of covertly kissing the