stream which ran
to the north, making directly for a low hill on which could be discerned
a low comb of deflected rocks of a dark color. At last, riding up the
ledge, she slipped from her horse and, tottering forward, fell face
downward on the grass beside an upturned giant slab of gray stone.

The men stared in wonder, searching the ground for evidence of mineral.
None could be seen. Suddenly lifting her head, the crone began to sing
again, uttering a heart-shaking wail which poured from her quivering
lips like the cry of the forsaken. The sight of her withered hands
strained together and the tears in her sunken cheeks went to the soul.
The desolate rocks, the falling rain, the wild and monstrous cliffs, the
encircling mountains, all lent irresistible power to her grief. She
seemed the minstrel of her race mourning for a vanished world.

"Come away," Eugene urged with a delicacy which sprang from awe. "_Her
husband buried there._"

Deeply touched to know that her grief was personal, and filled, too,
with a kind of helpless amazement at this emotional outbreak, the
gold-seekers withdrew down the slope, followed by the riderless pony,
leaving the old woman crouched close against the sepulcher of her dead,
pouring forth the sobbing wail of her song.

"This looks like the end of our mine," said Kelley, gloomily. "I begin
to think that the old witch led us up here just for the sake of visiting
that grave."

"It looks that way," responded Wetherell, "but what can we do? You can't
beat her, and we've done all we could to bribe her."

Eugene advised: "You wait. Bimeby she got done cryin'. To-morrow she got
cold--want meat, coffee--plenty bad. Then we go get her."

They went into camp not far away in the edge of a thicket of scraggly
wind-dwarfed pines, and put up their tents for the night.

"Wouldn't it put a cramp into you," began Kelley, as they stood beside
their fire, "to think that this old relict has actually led us all the
way up here in order to water the grave of a sweetheart who died forty
years ago?"

"It shows how human she is."

"Human! She's superhuman. She's crazy, that's what she is."

"It is all very wonderful to me, but I'm worried about her. She mustn't
stay out there in this rain. It's going to turn cold. See that streak in
the west?"

As Wetherell left the camp-fire and began to climb back toward the comb
of rocks he felt not merely the sheer immensity of this granite basin,
but the lonelin