But Dick did not notice the look that passed between the sisters.  The richer humor of Jessie’s retort had thrown him into convulsions of laughter.

“And now she says, wot’s the use o’ the gold without the flume?  ’Xcuse me, ladies, but that’s just puttin’ the hull question that’s agitatin’ this yer camp inter two speeches as clear as crystal.  There’s the hull crowd outside—­and some on ’em inside, like Fairfax, hez their doubts—­ez says with Miss Christie; and there’s all of us inside, ez holds Miss Jessie’s views.”

“I never heard Mr. Munroe say that the flume was wrong,” said Jessie quickly.

“Not to you, nat’rally,” said Dick, with a confidential look at Christie; “but I reckon he’d like some of the money it cost laid out for suthin’ else.  But what’s the odds?  The gold is there, and we’re bound to get it.”

Dick was the foreman of a gang of paid workmen, who had replaced the millionaires in mere manual labor, and the we was a polite figure of speech.

The conversation seemed to have taken an unfortunate turn, and both the girls experienced a feeling of relief when they entered the long gulch or defile that led to Indian Spring.  The track now becoming narrow, they were obliged to pass in single file along the precipitous hillside, led by this escort.  This effectually precluded any further speech, and Christie at once surrendered herself to the calm, obliterating influences of the forest.  The settlement and its gossip were far behind and forgotten.  In the absorption of nature, her companions passed out of her mind, even as they sometimes passed out of her sight in the windings of the shadowy trail.  As she rode alone, the fronds of breast-high ferns seemed to caress her with outstretched and gently-detaining hands; strange wildflowers sprang up through the parting underbrush; even the granite rocks that at times pressed closely upon the trail appeared as if cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or lightly flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines.  She recalled the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old double cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and, half regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer and more ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled against it.  The social complication that threatened her now seemed to her rather the outcome of her half-civilized parlor than of the sylvan glade.  How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin, and then to have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed them to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement!  The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that they were shared by others who were practical men.  She was fain to have recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing from the trail ahead of her for some time.  She quickened her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that gave her a more extended prospect.  But they had evidently disappeared.