ditch, and stood upon the lower boundary of the Amity Claim.

The gray mist was rising slowly from the river, clinging to the
tree-tops and drifting up the mountain-side, until it was caught among
those rocky altars, and held a sacrifice to the ascending sun. At his
feet the earth, cruelly gashed and scarred by his forgotten engines,
had, since the old days, put on a show of greenness here and there, and
now smiled forgivingly up at him, as if things were not so bad after
all. A few birds were bathing in the ditch with a pleasant suggestion of
its being a new and special provision of nature, and a hare ran into an
inverted sluice-box, as he approached, as if it were put there for that
purpose.

He had not yet dared to look in a certain direction. But the sun was now
high enough to paint the little eminence on which the cabin stood. In
spite of his self-control, his heart beat faster as he raised his eyes
toward it. Its window and door were closed, no smoke came from its adobe
chimney, but it was else unchanged. When within a few yards of it, he
picked up a broken shovel, and, shouldering it with a smile, strode
toward the door and knocked. There was no sound from within. The smile
died upon his lips as he nervously pushed the door open.

A figure started up angrily and came toward him,--a figure whose
bloodshot eyes suddenly fixed into a vacant stare, whose arms were
at first outstretched and then thrown up in warning gesticulation,--a
figure that suddenly gasped, choked, and then fell forward in a fit.

But before he touched the ground, York had him out into the open air and
sunshine. In the struggle, both fell and rolled over on the ground. But
the next moment York was sitting up, holding the convulsed frame of his