ets
and articles of clothing seemed dropping to pieces; in one of the bunks
there was a hideous resemblance in the longitudinal heap of clothing to
a withered and mummied corpse. So it might look in after years when some
passing stranger--but he stopped. A dread of the place was beginning
to creep over him; a dread of the days to come, when the monotonous
sunshine should lay bare the loneliness of these walls; the long, long
days of endless blue and cloudless, overhanging solitude; summer days
when the wearying, incessant trade winds should sing around that empty
shell and voice its desolation. He gathered together hastily a few
articles that were especially his own--rather that the free communion
of the camp, from indifference or accident, had left wholly to him. He
hesitated for a moment over his rifle, but, scrupulous in his wounded
pride, turned away and left the familiar weapon that in the dark days
had so often provided the dinner or breakfast of the little household.
Candor compels me to state that his equipment was not large nor
eminently practical. His scant pack was a light weight for even his
young shoulders, but I fear he thought more of getting away from the
Past than providing for the Future.

With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, and almost
mechanically turned his steps towards the creek he had crossed
that morning. He knew that by this route he would avoid meeting his
companions; its difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his
feverish limbs and give him time for reflection. He had determined to
leave the claim, but whence he had not yet considered. He reached the
bank of the creek where he had stood two hours before; it seemed to him
two years. He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad
pools of overflow, and fancied he looked older. He watched the rush and
outset of the turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and
to eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his
preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his
companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful boundaries. In
the drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the
bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the
Lone Star claim.

The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before--a calm so
inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem portentous--became
more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the turb