As he did so it seemed as if the night were their only guest, and had been waiting on the threshold to now enter bodily and pervade all things with its presence.  With that cool, fragrant inflow of air they breathed freely.  The red edge had gone from Black Spur, but it was even more clearly defined against the sky in its towering blackness.  The sky itself had grown lighter, although the stars still seemed mere reflections of the solitary pin-points of light scattered along the concave valley below.  Mingling with the cooler, restful air of the summit, yet penetratingly distinct from it, arose the stimulating breath of the pines below, still hot and panting from the day-long sun.  The silence was intense.  The far-off barking of a dog on the invisible river-bar nearly a mile beneath them came to them like a sound in a dream.  They had risen, and, standing in the doorway, by common consent turned their faces to the east.  It was the frequent attitude of the home-remembering miner, and it gave him the crowning glory of the view.  For, beyond the pine-hearsed summits, rarely seen except against the evening sky, lay a thin, white cloud like a dropped portion of the Milky Way.  Faint with an indescribable pallor, remote yet distinct enough to assert itself above and beyond all surrounding objects, it was always there.  It was the snow-line of the Sierras.

They turned away and silently reseated themselves, the same thought in the minds of each.  Here was something they could not take away, something to be left forever and irretrievably behind,—­left with the healthy life they had been leading, the cheerful endeavor, the undying hopefulness which it had fostered and blessed.  Was what they were taking away worth it?  And oddly enough, frank and outspoken as they had always been to each other, that common thought remained unuttered.  Even Barker was silent; perhaps he was also thinking of Kitty.

Suddenly two figures appeared in the very doorway of the cabin.  The effect was startling upon the partners, who had only just reseated themselves, and for a moment they had forgotten that the narrow band of light which shot forth from the open door rendered the darkness on either side of it more impenetrable, and that out of this darkness, although themselves guided by the light, the figures had just emerged.  Yet one was familiar enough.  It was the Hill drunkard, Dick Hall, or, as he was called, “Whiskey Dick,” or, indicated still more succinctly by the Hill humorists, “Alky Hall.”

Everybody had seen that sodden, puffy, but good-humored face; everybody had felt the fiery exhalations of that enormous red beard, which always seemed to be kept in a state of moist, unkempt luxuriance by liquor; everybody knew the absurd dignity of manner and attempted precision of statement with which he was wont to disguise his frequent excesses.  Very few, however, knew, or cared to know, the pathetic weariness and chilling horror that sometimes looked out of those bloodshot eyes.