anybody to find; we found it. It hasn't been tarnished by man's touch
before. I don't know how it strikes you, boys, but it seems to me
that of all gifts that are going it is the straightest. For whether we
deserve it or not, it comes to us first-hand--from God!"
The two men glanced quickly at the speaker, whose face flushed and then
smiled embarrassedly as if ashamed of the enthusiasm into which he had
been betrayed. But Demorest did not smile, and Stacy's eyes shone in the
firelight as he said languidly, "I never heard that prospecting was a
religious occupation before. But I shouldn't wonder if you're right,
Barker boy. So let's liquor up."
Nevertheless he did not move, nor did the others. The fire leaped
higher, bringing out the rude rafters and sternly economic details of
the rough cabin, and making the occupants in their seats before the fire
look gigantic by contrast.
"Who shut the door?" said Demorest after a pause.
"I did," said Barker. "I reckoned it was getting cold."
"Better open it again, now that the fire's blazing. It will light the
way if any of the men from below want to drop in this evening."
Stacy stared at his companion. "I thought that it was understood that
we were giving them that dinner at Boomville tomorrow night, so that we
might have the last evening here by ourselves in peace and quietness?"
"Yes, but if any one DID want to come it would seem churlish to shut him
out," said Demorest.
"I reckon you're feeling very much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good
fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he
continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile
in the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by--by its
specific gravity, I calculate--and sort of crampy and twitchy in the
legs, as if I ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds
me here. All the same, I doubt if anybody will come up--except from
curiosity. Our luck has made them rather sore down the hill, for all
they're coming to the dinner to-morrow."
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