on
of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant
melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair
of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was
reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands,
sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain
defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any
devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at
last joined in the refrain:

"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token
of the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow
managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused
himself to the Innocent by saying that he had "often been a week
without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst,
sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck--nigger-luck--he
don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the
gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it
for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when
it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck
since we left Poker Flat--you come along, and slap you get into it,
too. If you can hold your cards right along, you're all right. For,"
added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance--

"'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army,'"

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of
that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the
wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it
revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless,
uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to
which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air
the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away.
Mother Shipton sa