“The Carson boys borrowed it,” replied Uncle Jim.  “Anyhow, yours wasn’t no dream—­only a kind o’ vision, and the book don’t take no stock in visions.”  Nevertheless, he watched his partner with some sympathy, and added, “That reminds me that I had a dream the other night of being in ‘Frisco at a small hotel, with heaps o’ money, and all the time being sort o’ scared and bewildered over it.”

“No?” queried his partner eagerly yet reproachfully.  “You never let on anything about it to me!  It’s mighty queer you havin’ these strange feelin’s, for I’ve had ’em myself.  And only to-night, comin’ up from the spring, I saw two crows hopping in the trail, and I says, ’If I see another, it’s luck, sure!’ And you’ll think I’m lyin’, but when I went to the wood-pile just now there was the third one sittin’ up on a log as plain as I see you.  Tell ’e what folks ken laugh—­but that’s just what Jim Filgee saw the night before he made the big strike!”

They were both smiling, yet with an underlying credulity and seriousness as singularly pathetic as it seemed incongruous to their years and intelligence.  Small wonder, however, that in their occupation and environment—­living daily in an atmosphere of hope, expectation, and chance, looking forward each morning to the blind stroke of a pick that might bring fortune—­they should see signs in nature and hear mystic voices in the trackless woods that surrounded them.  Still less strange that they were peculiarly susceptible to the more recognized diversions of chance, and were gamblers on the turning of a card who trusted to the revelation of a shovelful of upturned earth.

It was quite natural, therefore, that they should return from their abstract form of divination to the table and their cards.  But they were scarcely seated before they heard a crackling step in the brush outside, and the free latch of their door was lifted.  A younger member of the camp entered.  He uttered a peevish “Halloo!” which might have passed for a greeting, or might have been a slight protest at finding the door closed, drew the stool from which Uncle Jim had just risen before the fire, shook his wet clothes like a Newfoundland dog, and sat down.  Yet he was by no means churlish nor coarse-looking, and this act was rather one of easy-going, selfish, youthful familiarity than of rudeness.  The cabin of Uncles Billy and Jim was considered a public right or “common” of the camp.  Conferences between individual miners were appointed there.  “I’ll meet you at Uncle Billy’s” was a common tryst.  Added to this was a tacit claim upon the partners’ arbitrative powers, or the equal right to request them to step outside if the interviews were of a private nature.  Yet there was never any objection on the part of the partners, and to-night there was not a shadow of resentment of this intrusion in the patient, good-humored, tolerant eyes of Uncles Jim and Billy as they gazed at their guest.  Perhaps there was a slight gleam of relief in Uncle Jim’s when he found that the guest was unaccompanied by any one, and that it was not a tryst.  It would have been unpleasant for the two partners to have stayed out in the rain while their guests were exchanging private confidences in their cabin.  While there might have been no limit to their good will, there might have been some to their capacity for exposure.