“Dear me!” said the lady in the back seat, rising with a half hysterical laugh, “hadn’t we better get out before they come?”

“There is not the slightest danger, madam,” said a quiet, observant man, who had scarcely spoken before, “or the expressman would not have told us; nor would he, I fancy, have left his post beside the treasure on the box.”

The slight sarcasm implied in this was enough to redden the expressman’s cheek in the light of the coach lamp which Yuba Bill had just unshipped and brought to the window.  He would have made some tart rejoinder, but was prevented by Yuba Bill addressing the passengers:  “Ye’ll have to put up with one light, I reckon, until we’ve got this job finished.”

“How long will it last, Bill?” asked the man nearest the window.

“Well,” said Bill, with a contemptuous glance at the elegant coach axe he was carrying in his hand, “considerin’ these purty first-class highly expensive hash choppers that the kempany furnishes us, I reckon it may take an hour.”

“But is there no place where we can wait?” asked the lady anxiously.  “I see a light in that house yonder.”

“Ye might try it, though the kempany, as a rule, ain’t in the habit o’ makin’ social calls there,” returned Bill, with a certain grim significance.  Then, turning to some outside passengers, he added, “Now, then! them ez is goin’ to help me tackle that tree, trot down!  I reckon that blitherin’ idiot” (the stranger with the lantern, who had disappeared) “will have sense enough to fetch us some ropes with his darned axe.”

The passengers thus addressed, apparently miners and workingmen, good humoredly descended, all except one, who seemed disinclined to leave the much coveted seat on the box beside the driver.

“I’ll look after your places and keep my own,” he said, with a laugh, as the others followed Bill through the dripping rain.  When they had disappeared, the young journalist turned to the lady.

“If you would really like to go to that house, I will gladly accompany you.”  It was possible that in addition to his youthful chivalry there was a little youthful resentment of Yuba Bill’s domineering prejudices in his attitude.  However, the quiet, observant passenger lifted a look of approval to him, and added, in his previous level, half contemptuous tone:—­

“You’ll be quite as well there as here, madam, and there is certainly no reason for your stopping in the coach when the driver chooses to leave it.”

The passengers looked at each other.  The stranger spoke with authority, and Bill had certainly been a little arbitrary!

“I’ll go too,” said the passenger by the window.  “And you’ll come, won’t you, Ned?” he added to the express messenger.  The young man hesitated; he was recently appointed, and as yet fresh to the business—­but he was not to be taught his duty by an officious stranger!  He resented the interference youthfully by doing the very thing he would have preferred not to do, and with assumed carelessness—­yet feeling in his pocket to assure himself that the key of the treasure compartment was safe—­turned to follow them.