practical explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly
refused to talk about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and
perhaps more perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which
took the place of his former vacuity of contentment, and an
intolerance of his attendants, which supplanted his old habitual
trustfulness to their care, that had been varied only by the
occasional querulousness of an invalid. His daughters sometimes
found him regarding them with an attention little short of
suspicion, and even his son detected a half-suppressed aversion in
his interviews with him.

Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his
children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very
little attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The
two girls succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the
society of the neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-
and-Ready. The young editor of the "Record" had really achieved,
through his supposed intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune
he had jestingly prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was
regarded as a virtual abandonment of the field to his rival: and
the general opinion was that he was engaged to the millionaire's
daughter on a certain probation of work and influence in his
prospective father-in-law's interests. He became successful in one
or two speculations, the magic of the lucky Mulrady's name
befriending him. In the superstition of the mining community, much
of this luck was due to his having secured the old cabin.

"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a
polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims
where the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping