the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the damp odor of leaves in the dining-room.  There was the cry of night birds in the creaking cupola, and the swift rush of dark wings past bedroom windows.  Lissome shapes crept along the terraces between the stolid wooden statues, or, bolder, scampered the whole length of the great veranda.  In the lulling of the wind the breath of the woods was everywhere; even the aroma of swelling sap—­as if the ghastly stumps on the deforested slope behind the hotel were bleeding afresh in the dewless night—­stung the eyes and nostrils of the sleepers.

It was, perhaps, from such cause as this that Barker was awakened suddenly by the voice of the boy from the crib beside him, crying, “Mamma! mamma!” Taking the child in his arms, he comforted him, saying she would come that morning, and showed him the faint dawn already veiling with color the ghostly pallor of the Sierras.  As they looked at it a great star shot forth from its brethren and fell.  It did not fall perpendicularly, but seemed for some seconds to slip along the slopes of Black Spur, gleaming through the trees like a chariot of fire.  It pleased the child to say that it was the light of mamma’s buggy that was fetching her home, and it pleased the father to encourage the boy’s fancy.  And talking thus in confidential whispers they fell asleep once more, the father—­himself a child in so many things—­holding the smaller and frailer hand in his.

They did not know that on the other side of the Divide the wife and mother, scared, doubting, and desperate, by the side of her scared, doubting, and desperate accomplice, was flying down the slope on her night-long road to ruin.  Still less did they know that, with the early singing birds, a careless horseman, emerging from the trail as the dust-stained buggy dashed past him, glanced at it with a puzzled air, uttered a quiet whistle of surprise, and then, wheeling his horse, gayly cantered after it.

CHAPTER V.

In the exercise of his arduous profession, Jack Hamlin had sat up all night in the magnolia saloon of the Divide, and as it was rather early to go to bed, he had, after his usual habit, shaken off the sedentary attitude and prepared himself for sleep by a fierce preliminary gallop in the woods.  Besides, he had been a large winner, and on those occasions he generally isolated himself from his companions to avoid foolish altercations with inexperienced players.  Even in fighting Jack was fastidious, and did not like to have his stomach for a real difficulty distended and vitiated by small preliminary indulgences.