of interest and stability of fortune that Devil's Ford had lacked. But
nothing could be done until the rainy season had fairly set in; until
the long-looked-for element that was to magically separate the gold from
the dross in those dull mounds of dust and gravel had come of its own
free will, and in its own appointed channels, independent of the feeble
auxiliaries that had hopelessly riven the rocks on the hillside, or hung
incomplete and unfinished in lofty scaffoldings above the settlement.
The rainy season came early. At first in gathered mists on the higher
peaks that were lifted in the morning sun only to show a fresher field
of dazzling white below; in white clouds that at first seemed to be mere
drifts blown across from those fresh snowfields, and obscuring the
clear blue above; in far-off murmurs in the hollow hills and gulches;
in nearer tinkling melody and baby prattling in the leaves. It came
with bright flashes of sunlight by day, with deep, monotonous shadow at
night; with the onset of heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods,
the tumultuous tossing of leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent
dissolution of the whole landscape in days of steady and uninterrupted
downfall. It came extravagantly, for every canyon had grown into a
torrent, every gulch a waterspout, every watercourse a river, and all
pouring into the North Fork, that, rushing past the settlement, seemed
to threaten it with lifted crest and flying mane. It came dangerously,
for one night the river, leaping the feeble barrier of Devil's Ford,
swept away houses and banks, scattered with unconscious irony the
laboriously collected heaps of gravel left for hydraulic machinery, and
spread out a vast and silent lake across the submerged flat.
In the hurry and confusion of that night the girls had thrown open their
cabin to the escaping miners, who hurried along the slope that was now
the bank of the river. Suddenly Christie felt her arm grasped, and she
was half-led, half-dragged, into the inner room. Her father stood before
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