diversion to his monotonous thought. The wilderness annihilates
time and space with the grim pathos of patience.

Nevertheless he smiled. "Ye don't seem to have got through coming
down yet," he continued, as a few small boulders, loosened in their
rapid descent, came more deliberately rolling and plunging after
the travelers along the gravelly bottom. Then he turned away with
the horses, and, after they were watered, he reentered the house.
His guests had evidently not waited for his ministration. They had
already taken one or two bottles from the shelves behind a wide bar
and helped themselves, and, glasses in hand, were now satisfying
the more imminent cravings of hunger with biscuits from a barrel
and slices of smoked herring from a box. Their equally singular
host, accepting their conduct as not unusual, joined the circle
they had comfortably drawn round the fireplace, and meditatively
kicking a brand back at the fire, said, without looking at them:--

"Well?"

"Well!" returned the leader, leaning back in his chair after
carefully unloosing the buckle of his belt, but with his eyes also
on the fire,--"well! we've prospected every yard of outcrop along
the Divide, and there ain't the ghost of a silver indication
anywhere."

"Not a smell," added the close-shaven guest, without raising his
eyes.

They all remained silent, looking at the fire, as if it were the
one thing they had taken into their confidence. Collinson also