ill I waited awhile longer till I could be
sure. Then I went down to my little shack and put on my other clothes.
I remember I'd gone so thin that they hung loose, and my palms were so
raw I had hard work handling the buttons, and got my shirt all bloody,
for I'd been in the drift forty hours, without sleep and breathing
powder smoke, till my knees buckled and wobbled under me. To this day
the smell of stale powder smoke makes a woman of me; but that morning I
sang, for I was going for my bride, and the world was brighter than it
has ever been for eighteen years. The little school-house was closed,
at which I remembered that the term was over. I'd been living
underground for weeks and lost track of the days, so that I had to
count them up on my fingers. It took me a long time, for I was pretty
tired in my head; but when I'd figured it out I went on to where she
was boarding.

"The woman of the place came to the door, a Scotch-woman. She had a
mole on her chin, I remember, a brownish-black mole with three hairs in
it. She wore an apron, too, that was kind of checkered, and three
buttons were open at the neck of her dress. I recall a lot more of
little things about her, though the rest of what happened is rather
dreamy.

"I asked for Merridy, and she told me she'd gone away--gone with
Bennett, the night before, while I was coughing blood from the powder
smoke; that they were married in the front room, and that the bride
looked beautiful. She had cried a bit on leaving Chandon,
and--and--that was about all. I counted the buttons on the
Scotchwoman's waist eight or ten times, and by-and-by she asked if I
was sick. But I wasn't. She was a kind-hearted woman, and I'd been to
her house a good deal, so she asked me to come in and rest. I wasn't
tired, so I went away, and climbed back up to the little shack and the
mine that I hated now."

The trader paused, and, reaching for the bottle, poured himself out a
glass of brandy, which he spilled into his throat raw, then continued:

"I turned into a kind of hermit after that, and I wasn't good to
associate with. Men got so they shunned me, and I knew they told
strange stories, because I heard them whisper when I went to the stores
for grub once a month. I changed all over, till even my squirrels and
partridges and other friends quit me; once in awhile I got out a ton or
two of rock and sold it, but I never worked the mine or opened it up--I
couldn't bear to go inside the drift.