Five years later the _Monarch_ was drawn up to the east bank of the Erie
Canal at Syracuse. It was past midnight, and with the exception of those
on Lem Crabbe's scow the occupants of all the long line of boats were
sleeping. Three men sat silently working in the living-room of the boat.
Lem Crabbe, Silent Lon Cronk, and his brother Eli, Cayuga Lake
squatters, were the workers. At one end of the room hung a broken iron
kettle. Into this Eli Cronk was dropping bits of gold which he cut from
baubles taken from a basket. Crabbe, his short legs drawn up under his
body, held a pair of pliers in his left hand, while caught firmly in the
hook was a child's tiny pin. From this he tore the small jewels, threw
them into a tin cup, and passed the setting on to Eli. The other man,
taciturn and fierce, was flattening out by means of strong pressers
several gold rings and bracelets. The three had worked for many hours
with scarcely a word spoken, with scarcely a recognition of one another.

Of a sudden Eli Cronk raised his head and said, "Lem, Scraggy was to
Mammy's t'other day."

"I didn't know ye'd been to Ithacy?" Lem made the statement a question.

"Yep, I went to see Mammy, and she says as how Scraggy's pappy were
dead, and as how the gal's teched in here." His words were low, and he
raised his forefinger to his head significantly.

"She ain't allers a stayin' in the squatter country nuther," he pursued.
"She takes that damn ugly cat of her'n and scoots away for a time. And
none of 'em up there don't know where she goes. Hones' Injun, don't she
never come about this here scow, Lem?"