that his ears had fooled him, or that whoever it had been who had
disturbed him with the merry peal had gone away, he went back to his
work.

Just what this work could be was what she waited curiously to see. She
felt not the least resentment of the trespass it involved, for the land
was wild, and on it, as elsewhere in the mountains, any one was free to
come and go who did not commit the foolishness of neglecting camp fires,
likely to start forests into blaze, or the supreme treachery of giving
information to the revenue officials about hidden stills. Her eager
curiosity was aroused, more by the mysterious nature of the stranger's
operations than by the fact that they were conducted on her land.

Having satisfied himself that no one, now, was near, and, therefore,
that he was not watched, the unpleasantly mysterious old man went back
to the work which evidently had brought him hither. With utmost care he
moved about the place, scrutinizing outcropping rocks, and this, as they
were everywhere, meant a minute examination of the land. In his hand he
carried a small hammer, and, with this, now and then, after a careful
visual examination of a rock, he knicked it, here and there,
investigating carefully and even eagerly the scars he made, the bits of
rock which were clipped off, now and then even looking at the latter
through a magnifying glass, which he took for the purpose from a pocket
of his vest.

She had watched these operations, fascinated, for, possibly, a full half
hour, despite the discomfort of damp clothing, which had begun to chill
her, when she saw signs of violent excitement on the old man's face and
in his actions, after he had chipped a rock, from which he first had had
to scrape a thin superstratum of light soil.