ng sun had penetrated the cold air they had
climbed the ridge and obtained a wondrous view of broken country, the
hills alight with the morning rays, the valleys misty and mystical.
They made good progress on the summit, which was paved with barren rock
and sparsely carpeted with short moss, while there was never a hint of
insects to annoy them. Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an
unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their
destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come,
and wondered if he had not been foolhardy to undertake this rash
enterprise.

"I wish Stark was not one of Lee's party," he said once. "He may
misunderstand our being together this way."

"But when he learns that we love each other, that will explain
everything."

"I'm not so sure. He doesn't know you as Lee and Poleon and your father
do. I think we had better say nothing at all about--you and me--to any
one."

"But why?" questioned the girl, stopping abruptly. "They will know it,
anyhow, when they see us. I can't conceal it."

"I am wiser in this than you are," the soldier insisted, "and we
mustn't act like lovers; trust this to me."

"Oh, I won't play that!" cried Necia, petulantly. "If all this is going
to end when we get to Lee's cabin, we'll stay right here forever."

He was not sure of all the logic he advanced in convincing her, but she
yielded finally, saying:

"Well, I suppose you know best, and, anyhow, littles should always
mind."

They clung to the divide for several hours, then descended into the bed
of a stream, which they followed until it joined a larger one a couple
of miles below, and there, sheltered in a grove of whispering firs,
they found Lee's cabin nestling in a narrow, forked valley. Evidently
the miner had selected a point on the main creek just below the
confluence of the feeders as a place in which to prospect, and Burrell
fell to wondering which one of these smaller streams supplied the run
of gold.

"There's no one here," said Necia, gleefully. "We've beat them in!
We've beat them in!"

They had been walking rapidly since dawn, and, although Burrell's watch
showed two o'clock, she refused to halt for lunch, declaring that the
others might arrive at any moment; so down they went to the lower end
of "No Creek" Lee's location, where Burrell blazed a smooth spot on the
down-stream side of a tree and wrote thereon at Necia's dictation. When
he had finished, she sig