with crossed arms on her breast as she stood on the ledge, until, as seen from below through the twisting smoke, they might have seemed a figure of the Madonna and Child niched in the wall.  Then a voice from above called to her, “Courage!” and she felt the flap of a twisted sheet lowered from an upper window against her face.  She grasped it eagerly; it held firmly.  Then she heard a cry from below, saw them carrying a ladder, and at last was lifted with her burden from the ledge by powerful hands.  Then only did she raise her eyes to the upper window whence had come her help.  Smoke and flame were pouring from it.  The unknown hero who had sacrificed his only chance of escape to her remained forever unknown.

*****

Only four miles away that night a group of men were waiting for the dawn in the shadow of a pine near Heavy Tree Bar.  As the sky glowed redly over the crest between them and Hymettus, Hamlin said:—­

“Another one of those forest fires.  It’s this side of Black Spur, and a big one, I reckon.”

“Do you know,” said Barker thoughtfully, “I was thinking of the time the old cabin burnt up on Heavy Tree.  It looks to be about in the same place.”

“Hush!” said Stacy sharply.

CHAPTER IX.

An abandoned tunnel—­an irregular orifice in the mountain flank which looked like a dried-up sewer that had disgorged through its opening the refuse of the mountain in red slime, gravel, and a peculiar clay known as “cement,” in a foul streak down its side; a narrow ledge on either side, broken up by heaps of quartz, tailings, and rock, and half hidden in scrub, oak, and myrtle; a decaying cabin of logs, bark, and cobblestones—­these made up the exterior of the Marshall claim.  To this defacement of the mountain, the rude clearing of thicket and underbrush by fire or blasting, the lopping of tree-boughs and the decapitation of saplings, might be added the debris and ruins of half-civilized occupancy.  The ground before the cabin was covered with broken boxes, tin cans, the staves and broken hoops of casks, and the cast-off rags of blankets and clothing.  The whole claim in its unsavory, unpicturesque details, and its vulgar story of sordid, reckless, and selfish occupancy and abandonment, was a foul blot on the landscape, which the first rosy dawn only made the more offending.  Surely the last spot in the world that men should quarrel and fight for!

So thought George Barker, as with his companions they moved in single file slowly towards it.  The little party consisted only of himself, Demorest, and Stacy; Marshall and Hamlin—­according to a prearranged plan—­were still in ambush to join them at the first appearance of Steptoe and his gang.  The claim was yet unoccupied; they had secured their first success.  Steptoe’s followers, unaware that his design had been discovered, and confident that they could easily reach the claim before Marshall