in his
chair, nursing, with all the gloomy concentration of a monastic nature,
a single terrible suspicion.

CHAPTER IV.

Howbeit the sun shone cheerfully over the Bar the next morning and the
next; the breath of life and activity was in the air; the settlement
never had been more prosperous, and the yield from the opened placers
on the drained river-bed that week was enormous. The Brothers Wayne
were said to be "rolling in gold." It was thought to be consistent with
Madison Wayne's nature that there was no trace of good fortune in his
face or manner--rather that he had become more nervous, restless, and
gloomy. This was attributed to the joylessness of avarice as contrasted
with the spendthrift gayety of the more liberal Arthur, and he was
feared and RESPECTED as a miser. His long, solitary walks around the
promontory, his incessant watchfulness, his reticence when questioned,
were all recognized as the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed
in money-getting. The reverence they failed to yield to his religious
isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial
abstraction. But Mr. McGee was not so deceived. Overtaking him one
day under the fringe of willows, he characteristically chided him
with absenting himself from Mrs. McGee and her house since their last
interview.

"I reckon you did not harbor malice in your Christianity," he said;
"but it looks mighty like ez if ye was throwing off on Safie and me on
account of what I said."

In vain Madison gloomily and almost sternly protested.

McGee looked him all over with his clear measuring eye, and for some
minutes was singularly silent. At last he said slowly: "I've been
thinkin' suthin' o' goin' down to 'Frisco, and I'd be a heap easier in
my mind ef you'd promise to look arter Safie now and then."

"You surely are not going to leave her here ALONE?" said Wayne roughly.

"Why not?"

For an instant Wayne hesitated. Then he burst out. "For a hundred
reasons! If she ever wanted your protection, before, she surely does
now. Do you suppose the Bar is any less heathen or more regenerated than
it was when you thought it necessary to guard her with your revolver?
Man! It is a hundred times worse than then! The new claims have
filled it with spying adventurers--with wolves like Hamlin and his
friends--idolaters who would set up Baal and Ashteroth here--and fill
your tents with the curses of Sodom!"

Perhaps it was owing to the Scriptural ph