the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and
children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that of
Monte Flat,--a community accustomed to great expectation and small
realization,--a community wherein, to use the local dialect, "they
got the color, and struck hardpan," more frequently than any other
mining-camp,--in such a community, the fullest credence was not given
to old man Plunkett's facts. There was only one exception to the
general unbelief,--Henry York of Sandy Bar. It was he who was always
an attentive listener; it was his scant purse that had often furnished
Plunkett with means to pursue his unprofitable speculations; it was to
him that the charms of Melinda were more frequently rehearsed; it was he
that had borrowed her photograph; and it was he that, sitting alone in
his little cabin one night, kissed that photograph, until his honest,
handsome face glowed again in the firelight.

It was dusty in Monte Flat. The ruins of the long dry season were
crumbling everywhere: everywhere the dying summer had strewn its red
ashes a foot deep, or exhaled its last breath in a red cloud above the
troubled highways. The alders and cottonwoods, that marked the line of
the water-courses, were grimy with dust, and looked as if they might
have taken root in the open air. The gleaming stones of the parched
water-courses themselves were as dry bones in the valley of death. The
dusty sunset at times painted the flanks of the distant hills a dull,
coppery hue: on other days, there was an odd, indefinable earthquake
halo on the volcanic cones of the farther coast-spurs. Again an acrid,
resinous smoke from the burning wood on Heavytree Hill smarted the eyes,
and choked the free breath of Monte Flat; or a fierce wind, driving
every thing, including the shrivelled summer, like a curled leaf before
it, swept down the flanks of the Sierras, and chased the inhabitants to
the doors of their cabins, and shook its red fist in at their windows.