was being slowly and surely invested; more than
that, the character of its surroundings was altered, and the complexion
of the river had changed. The Wayne engines on the point above had
turned the drift and debris into the current that now thickened and ran
yellow around the wooded shore. The fringes of this Eden were already
tainted with the color of gold.

It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself to
the desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim along
the shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in compensation for
restricting the approach to the promontory--and thus participated in
the fortunes of the Bar. Mrs. McGee amused herself by watching from
her eyrie, with a presumably childish interest, the operations of
the red-shirted brothers on the Bar; her husband, however, always
accompanying her when she crossed the Bar to the bank. Some two or three
other women--wives of miners--had joined the camp, but it was evident
that McGee was as little inclined to intrust his wife to their
companionship as to that of their husbands. An opinion obtained that
McGee, being an old resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's,
was inclined to be aristocratic and exclusive.

Meantime, the two brothers who had founded the fortunes of the Bar were
accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of reserve.
Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners, and were as
efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as the reputation of
Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife. Madison Wayne, the elder, was
tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech and slow in deduction;
his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline, but smaller and of a more
delicate and perhaps a more impressible nature. It was believed by some
that it was within the range of possibility that Arthur would yet be
seen "taking his cocktail like a white man," or "dropping his scads"
at draw poker. At present, however, they seemed content to spend their
evenings in their own cabin, and their Sundays at a grim Presbyterian
tabernacle in the next town, to which they walked ten miles, where, it
was currently believed, "hell fire was ladled out free," and "infants
damned for nothing." When they did not go to meeting it was also
believed that the minister came to them, until it was ascertained that
the sound of sacred recitation overheard in their