d up at the end of the song and spat upon his hands.

"Gett," he said placidly, "I think that's a lie--metaphorical speakin'.
Ain't mad, are you?"

Gettysburg made no response. He merely shoveled.

One of the sluices, weakened by a leak that had undermined its pinning,
fell from place, at the farther end of the line. Old Dave went down to
repair it. Napoleon took advantage of his absence to come to Beth,
with an air of imparting something confidential.

"Splice my main brace," said he, with his head on one side, quaintly,
"wasn't that a blasphermous yarn old Dave was givin' us about the wind
blowing that log chain away a link at a time? Old son of a gun!"

Beth was inquisitive.

"Why do you call him a son of a gun?"

Napoleon scratched his head.

"Well, you see, Dave's mother held up his father with a Colt forty-five
and makes him marry her. Then along comes Dave. I reckon that makes
him a sure enough son of a gun."

Beth said: "Oh." She turned a little red.

"Yep, good old cuss, Dave is, though. No good for a seafearing man,
however. He could never learn to swear--he ain't got no ear for music."

He returned to his shovel. He and Gettysburg worked in silence for
fifteen minutes. Old Dave returned and joined them. Gettysburg tuned
up for another of his songs, the burden of which was the tale of a
hen-pecked man.

Once more at its end Napoleon looked up and spat on his hands.

"There ain't nothing that can keep some women down 'cept a
gravestone--and I've seen some gravestones which was tilted."

Despite the interest and amusement she felt in it all, Beth was
becoming sleepy as she sat there in the sun. She shook off the spell
and arose, approaching closer to the bank and flume where Gettysburg
was toiling. He labored on, silently, for several minutes, then
paused, straightened up by degrees, as if the folds in his back were
stubborn, and looked at their visitor steadily, his glass eye
particularly fixed. One of his hands pulled down his jaw, and then it
closed up with a thump.

"Guess this kind of a racket is sort of new to you, Mr. Kent," he
ventured. "Ever seen gold washin' before?"

"No," Beth confessed, "and I don't see where the gold is to come from
now."

Gettysburg chuckled. "Holy toads! Miners do a heap of work and never
see it neither. Me and Van and Napoleon has went through purg and
back, many's the time, and was lucky to git out with our skeletons,
sayin' nuthin' abou