carefully, awaiting the development of the
situation.

It was only a minute or two at most, but it appeared hours to one or
two, especially to poor Josh, who, in his fright of being scalped by a
possible Indian, would have cheerfully given up all his chances of gold
in the mine and everything, to have swapped places with the envious
Jasper and been safe in camp.

The listeners, however, did not have to wait so very long.

In a little while they heard the sound of twigs being broken near them,
as if some one were making his way through the copse. Soon they could
distinguish, in addition, the heavy tramp of footsteps--they sounded as
heavy as those of elephants to them, with their ears to the ground--
trampling down the thick undergrowth and rotten twigs in the thicket
before them; and they could also hear a sort of muttering sound, like
that caused by somebody speaking to himself in soliloquy.

The situation, if an exciting one, was not of any long duration, for
while they were listening the denouement came.

A nondescript-clad figure came out of the brushwood into the open
clearing, walking towards the spot where the mountain-sheep lay
stretched on the sward, which was partly covered with the snow that
remained unmelted under the lee of the cliff; and a voice, without doubt
appertaining to the figure, exclaimed in unmistakable English accents--

"Well, I'm hanged if I ever heard of such a thing before in my life! I
know I am a tidy shot, but if I were to mention this at home they would
say I was telling a confounded lie! To think of killing three of those
queer creatures at one shot! By Jove, who'd believe it?"

The listeners burst into a simultaneous roar of laughter.

"It's only a Britisher!" said Noah Webster; and they all rose from their
covert and sallied out into the open, to the intense astonishment of the
new-comer, whose surprise was evidently mixed with a proportionate
amount of alarm, for he clutched his gun more tightly at the sight of
them, and stood apparently on the defensive.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER EIGHT.

AN UNEXPECTED COINCIDENCE.

"We are friends," Mr Rawlings said, "some of us your countrymen, if, as
I judge by your accent, you are an Englishman. We are working a mine in
this neighbourhood. My name is Rawlings, and I am the proprietor of the
mine."

"My name is Wilton--Ernest Wilton," the stranger said, taking the hand
that Mr Rawlings held out. "I am glad indeed to meet with a