ters rang. Any ship, to be sure,
with a hundredth part as many holes in it as our barrack, must long ago
have gone to her last port. Up to that time I had always imagined Mrs.
Hanson's loquacity to be mere incontinence, that she said what was
uppermost for the pleasure of speaking, and laughed and laughed again as
a kind of musical accompaniment. But I now found there was an art in it.
I found it less communicative than silence itself. I wished to know why
Ronalds had come; how he had found his way without Rufe; and why, being
on the spot, he had not refreshed his title. She talked interminably on,
but her replies were never answers. She fled under a cloud of words; and
when I had made sure that she was purposely eluding me, I dropped the
subject in my turn, and let her rattle where she would.

She had come to tell us that, instead of waiting for Tuesday, the claim
was to be jumped on the morrow. How? If the time were not out, it was
impossible. Why? If Ronalds had come and gone and done nothing, there
was the less cause for hurry. But again I could reach no satisfaction.
The claim was to be jumped next morning, that was all that she would
condescend upon.

And yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor yet the next, and a
whole week had come and gone before we heard more of this exploit. That
day week, however, a day of great heat, Hanson, with a little roll of
paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe alight; Breedlove, his large,
dull friend, to act, I suppose, as witness; Mrs. Hanson in her Sunday
best; and all the children from the eldest to the youngest;--arrived in
a procession, tailing one behind another up the path. Caliban was
absent, but he had been chary of his friendly visits since the row; and
with that exception, the whole family was gathered together as for a
marriage or a christening. Strong was sitting at work, in the shade of
the dwarf madronas near the forge; and they planted themselves about him
in a circle, one on a stone, another on the waggon rails, a third on a
piece of plank. Gradually the children stole away up the canyon to where
there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the one across the dump;
and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one
avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes of the glen.
Meanwhile we elders sat together on the platform, Hanson and his friend
smoking in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson rattling on as usual
with an adroit vol