don’t hear anything else?”
“No.”
“Nothing like—like—like—”
Rand, who had been listening with an intensity that distorted the left side of his face, interrupted him impatiently.
“Like what?”
“Like a woman sobbin’?”
“Ruth,” said Rand, suddenly looking up in his brother’s face, “what’s gone of you?”
Ruth laughed. “The fire’s out,” he said, abruptly re-entering the cabin. “I’m goin’ to turn in.”
Rand, following his brother half reproachfully, saw him divest himself of his clothing, and roll himself in the blankets of his bed.
“Good-night, Randy!”
Rand hesitated. He would have liked to ask his brother another question; but there was clearly nothing to be done but follow his example.
“Good-night, Ruthy!” he said, and put out the light. As he did so, the glow in the eastern horizon faded, too, and darkness seemed to well up from the depths below, and, flowing in the open door, wrapped them in deeper slumber.
CHAPTER II
THE CLOUDS GATHER
Twelve months had elapsed since the quarrel and reconciliation, during which interval no reference was made by either of the brothers to the cause which had provoked it. Rand was at work in the shaft, Ruth having that morning undertaken the replenishment of the larder with game from the wooded skirt of the mountain. Rand had taken advantage of his brother’s absence to “prospect” in the “drift,”—a proceeding utterly at variance with his previous condemnation of all such speculative essay; but Rand, despite his assumption of a superior practical nature, was not above certain local superstitions. Having that morning put on his gray flannel shirt wrong side out,—an abstraction recognized among the miners as the sure forerunner of divination and treasure-discovery,—he could not forego that opportunity of trying his luck, without hazarding a dangerous example. He was also conscious of feeling “chipper,”—another local expression for buoyancy of spirit, not common to men who work fifty feet below the surface, without the stimulus of air and sunshine, and not to be overlooked as an important factor in fortunate adventure. Nevertheless, noon came without the discovery of any treasure. He had attacked the walls on either side of the lateral “drift” skilfully, so as to expose their quality without destroying their cohesive integrity, but had found nothing. Once or twice, returning to the shaft for rest and air, its grim silence had seemed to him pervaded with some vague echo of cheerful holiday voices above. This set him to thinking of his brother’s equally extravagant fancy of the wailing voices in the air on the night of the fire, and of his attributing it to a lover’s abstraction.
“I laid it to his being struck after that gal; and yet,” Rand continued to himself, “here’s me, who haven’t been foolin’ round no gal, and dog my skin if I didn’t think I heard one singin’ up thar!” He put his foot on the lower round of the ladder, paused, and slowly ascended a dozen steps. Here he paused again. All at once the whole shaft was filled with the musical vibrations of a woman’s song. Seizing the rope that hung idly from the windlass, he half climbed, half swung himself, to the surface.
The voice was there; but the sudden transition to the dazzling level before him at first blinded his eyes, so that he took in only by degrees the unwonted spectacle of the singer,—a pretty girl, standing on tiptoe on a bowlder not a dozen yards from him, utterly absorbed in tying a gayly-striped neckerchief, evidently taken from her own plump throat, to the halliards of a freshly-cut hickory-pole newly reared as a flag-staff beside her. The hickory-pole, the halliards, the fluttering scarf, the young lady herself, were all glaring innovations on the familiar landscape; but Rand, with his hand still on the rope, silently and demurely enjoyed it.
For the better understanding of the general reader, who does not live on an isolated mountain, it may be observed that the young lady’s position on the rock exhibited some study of POSE, and a certain exaggeration of attitude, that betrayed the habit of an audience; also that her voice had an artificial accent that was not wholly unconscious, even in this lofty solitude. Yet the very next moment, when she turned, and caught Rand’s eye fixed upon her, she started naturally, colored slightly, uttered that feminine adjuration, “Good Lord! gracious! goodness me!” which is seldom used in reference to its effect upon the hearer, and skipped instantly from the bowlder to the ground. Here, however, she alighted in a POSE, brought the right heel of her neatly-fitting left boot closely into the hollowed side of her right instep, at the same moment deftly caught her flying skirt, whipped it around her ankles, and, slightly raising it behind, permitted the chaste display of an inch or two of frilled white petticoat. The most irreverent critic of the sex will, I think, admit that it has some movements that are automatic.
“Hope I didn’t disturb ye,” said Rand, pointing to the flag-staff.
The young lady slightly turned her head. “No,” she said; “but I didn’t know anybody was here, of course. Our PARTY”—she emphasized the word, and accompanied it with a look toward the further extremity of the plateau, to show she was not alone—“our party climbed this ridge, and put up this pole as a sign to show they did it.” The ridiculous self-complacency of this record in the face of a man who was evidently a dweller on the mountain apparently struck her for the first time. “We didn’t know,” she stammered, looking at the shaft from which Rand had emerged, “that—that—” She stopped, and, glancing again towards the distant range where her friends had disappeared, began to edge away.
“They can’t be far off,” interposed Rand quietly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for the lady to be there. “Table Mountain ain’t as big as all that. Don’t you be scared! So you thought nobody lived up here?”
She turned upon him a pair of honest hazel eyes, which not only contradicted the somewhat meretricious smartness of her dress, but was utterly inconsistent with the palpable artificial color of her hair,—an obvious imitation of a certain popular fashion then known in artistic circles as the “British Blonde,”—and began to ostentatiously resume a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves. Having, as it were, thus indicated her standing and respectability, and put an immeasurable distance between herself and her bold interlocutor, she said impressively, “We evidently made a mistake: I will rejoin our party, who will, of course, apologize.”
“What’s your hurry?” said the imperturbable Rand, disengaging himself from the rope, and walking towards her. “As long as you’re up here, you might stop a spell.”
“I have no wish to intrude; that is, our party certainly has not,” continued the young lady, pulling the tight gloves, and smoothing the plump, almost bursting fingers, with an affectation of fashionable ease.
“Oh! I haven’t any thing to do just now,” said Rand, “and it’s about grub time, I reckon. Yes, I live here, Ruth and me,—right here.”
The young woman glanced at the shaft.
“No, not down there,” said Rand, following her eye, with a laugh. “Come here, and I’ll show you.”
A strong desire to keep up an appearance of genteel reserve, and an equally strong inclination to enjoy the adventurous company of this good-looking, hearty young fellow, made her hesitate. Perhaps she regretted having undertaken a role of such dignity at the beginning: she could have been so perfectly natural with this perfectly natural man, whereas any relaxation now might increase his familiarity. And yet she was not without a vague suspicion that her dignity and her gloves were alike
