“Just one more deal,” pleaded his partner.

Uncle Jim looked at the fire, Uncle Billy hastily dealt, and threw the two hands face up on the table.  They were the ordinary average cards.  He dealt again, with the same result.  “I told you so,” said Uncle Jim, without looking up.

It certainly seemed a tame performance after their wonderful hands, and after another trial Uncle Billy threw the cards aside and drew his stool before the fire.  “Mighty queer, warn’t it?” he said, with reminiscent awe.  “Three times running.  Do you know, I felt a kind o’ creepy feelin’ down my back all the time.  Criky! what luck!  None of the boys would believe it if we told ’em—­least of all that Dick Bullen, who don’t believe in luck, anyway.  Wonder what he’d have said! and, Lord! how he’d have looked!  Wall! what are you starin’ so for?”

Uncle Jim had faced around, and was gazing at Uncle Billy’s good-humored, simple face.  “Nothin’!” he said briefly, and his eyes again sought the fire.

“Then don’t look as if you was seein’ suthin’—­you give me the creeps,” returned Uncle Billy a little petulantly.  “Let’s turn in, afore the fire goes out!”

The fateful cards were put back into the drawer, the table shoved against the wall.  The operation of undressing was quickly got over, the clothes they wore being put on top of their blankets.  Uncle Billy yawned, “I wonder what kind of a dream I’ll have tonight—­it oughter be suthin’ to explain that luck.”  This was his “good-night” to his partner.  In a few moments he was sound asleep.

Not so Uncle Jim.  He heard the wind gradually go down, and in the oppressive silence that followed could detect the deep breathing of his companion and the far-off yelp of a coyote.  His eyesight becoming accustomed to the semi-darkness, broken only by the scintillation of the dying embers of their fire, he could take in every detail of their sordid cabin and the rude environment in which they had lived so long.  The dismal patches on the bark roof, the wretched makeshifts of each day, the dreary prolongation of discomfort, were all plain to him now, without the sanguine hope that had made them bearable.  And when he shut his eyes upon them, it was only to travel in fancy down the steep mountain side that he had trodden so often to the dreary claim on the overflowed river, to the heaps of “tailings” that encumbered it, like empty shells of the hollow, profitless days spent there, which they were always waiting for the stroke of good fortune to clear away.  He saw again the rotten “sluicing,” through whose hopeless rifts and holes even their scant daily earnings had become scantier.  At last he arose, and with infinite gentleness let himself down from his berth without disturbing his sleeping partner, and wrapping himself in his blanket, went to the door, which he noiselessly opened.  From the position of a few stars that were glittering in the northern sky he knew that it was yet scarcely midnight; there were still long, restless hours before the day!  In the feverish state into which he had gradually worked himself it seemed to him impossible to wait the coming of the dawn.