When morning sunlight next peeped down into the Flower Pocket, it found everything generally astir.  Anita was up and pursuing her household duties, but she was calm, now, even sadder than before, making a strange contrast to blithe, gaysome Alice, who flitted about, here and there, like some bright-winged butterfly surrounded by a halo of perpetual sunshine.

* * * * *

Unknown to any one save themselves, two men were within the valley of the Flower Pocket gold-mines—­there on business, and that business meant bloodshed.  They were secreted in among the foothills on the western side of the flowering paradise, at a point where they were not observed, and at the same time were the observers of all that was going on in front of them.

How came they here, when the hand of Deadwood Dick guarded the only accessible entrance there was to the valley?  The answer was:  they came secretly through the pass on the night preceding the arrival of the road-agents, and had been lying in close concealment ever since.

The one was an elderly man of portly figure, and the other a young, dandyish fellow, evidently the elder’s son, for they resembled each other in every feature.  We make no difficulty to recognizing them as the same precious pair whom Outlaw Dick captured from the stage, only to lose them again through the treachery of two of his own band.

Both looked considerably the worse for wear, and the gaunt, hungry expression on their features, as the morning sunlight shone down upon them, declared in a language more adequate than words, that they were beginning to suffer the first pangs of starvation.

“We cannot hold out at this rate much longer!” the elder Filmore cried, as he watched the bustle in the valley below.  “I’m as empty as a collapsed balloon, and what’s more, we’re in no prospects of immediate relief.”

Filmore, the younger, groaned aloud in agony of spirit.

“Curse the Black Hills and all who have been fools enough to inhabit them, anyhow!” he growled, savagely; “just let me get back in the land of civilization again, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll know enough to stay there.”

“Bah! this little rough experience will do you good.  If we only had a square meal or two and a basket of sherry, I should feel quite at home.  Nothing but a fair prospect of increasing our individual finances would ever have lured me into this outlandish place.  But money, you know, is the root of all—­”

“Evil!” broke in the other, “and after three months’ wild-goose-chase you are just as destitute of the desired root as you were at first.”

“True, but we have at least discovered one of the shrubs at the bottom of which grows the root.”

“You refer to Deadwood Dick?”

“I do.  He is here in the valley, and he must never leave it alive.  While we have the chance we must strike the blow that will forever silence his tongue.”