the former channel of the river, choked and diverted though ages of
alluvial drift, they may be said to have changed, also, the fortunes
of the little settlement. Popular feeling and the new prosperity which
dawned upon the miners recognized the two brothers by giving the name of
Wayne's Bar to the infant settlement and its post-office. The peaceful
promontory, although made easier of access, still preserved its calm
seclusion, and pretty Mrs. McGee could contemplate through the leaves of
her bower the work going on at its base, herself unseen. Nevertheless,
this Arcadian retreat was being slowly and surely invested; more than
that, the character of its surroundings was altered, and the complexion
of the river had changed. The Wayne engines on the point above had
turned the drift and debris into the current that now thickened and ran
yellow around the wooded shore. The fringes of this Eden were already
tainted with the color of gold.

It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself to
the desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim along
the shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in compensation for
restricting the approach to the promontory--and thus participated in
the fortunes of the Bar. Mrs. McGee amused herself by watching from
her eyrie, with a presumably childish interest, the operations of
the red-shirted brothers on the Bar; her husband, however, always
accompanying her when she crossed the Bar to the bank. Some two or three
other women--wives of miners--had joined the camp, but it was evident
that McGee was as little inclined to intrust his wife to their
companionship as to that of their husbands. An opinion obtained that
McGee, being an old resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's,
was inclined to be aristocratic and exclusive.