“Of course you won’t try to go on to-night?” she asked Ben.  “You’ll stay at the cabin?”

“There likely won’t be room for three,” he answered.  “But it’s a clear night.  I can make a fire and sleep out.”

It was true.  The stars were emerging, faint points of light through the darkening canopy of the sky; and to the East a silver glint on the horizon forecast the rising moon.

They halted at last; and Beatrice saw her father’s form, framed in the doorway.  She hastened into his arms:  waiting in the darkness Ben could not help but hear his welcome.  Many things were doubtful; but there could be no doubt of the love that Neilson bore his daughter.  The amused, half-teasing words with which he received her did not in the least disguise it.  “The joy and the light of his life,” Ben commented to himself.  The gray old claim-jumper had this to redeem him, at least.

“But why so many horses, Beatrice?” he asked.  “You—­brought some one with you?”

Ben was not so far distant that he failed to discern the instant change in Neilson’s tone.  It had a strained, almost an apprehensive quality such as few men had ever heard in his voice before.  Plainly all visitors in this end of the mountains were regarded with suspicion.

“He’s a prospector—­Mr. Darby,” the girl replied.  “Come here, Ben—­and be introduced.”  She turned toward her new-found friend; and the latter walked near, into the light that streamed over him from the doorway.  “This is my father, Mr. Darby—­Mr. Neilson.  Some one told him this was a good gold country.”

Ben had already decided upon his course of action and had his answer ready.  He knew perfectly that it would only put Neilson on his guard if he stated his true position; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram.  “I may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson,” he said, “but a man I met down on the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here.  He said that he had some sort of a claim up here that his brother left him, and though it was a pocket country, he thought there’d soon be a great rush up this way.”

“I hardly know who it could have been that you met,” Neilson began doubtfully.  “He didn’t tell you his name—­”

“Melville.  I believe that was it.  And if you’ll tell me how to find him, I’ll try to go on to-night.  I brought him some of his belongings from Snowy Gulch—­”

“Melville, eh?  I guess I know who you mean now.  But no—­I don’t know of any claim unless it’s over east, beyond here.  Maybe further down the river.”

Ben made no reply at once; but his mind sped like lightning.  Of course Neilson was lying about the claim:  he knew perfectly that at that moment he was occupying one of Hiram Melville’s cabins.  He was a first-class actor, too—­his voice indicating scarcely no acquaintance with or interest in the name.

“He hasn’t come up this way?” Ben asked casually.

“He hasn’t come through here that I know of.  Of course I’m working at my claim—­with my partners—­and he might have gone through without our seeing him.  It seems rather unlikely.”