The single room was unequally divided; the larger part containing three beds, by day rolled in a single pile in one corner to make room for a table and chairs.  A few dresses hanging from nails on the wall showed that it was the women’s room.  The smaller compartment was again subdivided by a hanging blanket, behind which was a rude bunk or berth against the wall, a table made of a packing-box, containing a tin basin and a can of water.  This was his apartment.

“The women-folks are down the creek, bakin’, to-day,” said Jules explanatorily; “but I reckon that one of ’em will be up here in a jiffy to make supper, so you just take it easy till they come.  I’ve got to meander over to the claim afore I turn in, but you just lie by to-night and take a rest.”

He turned away, leaving Hemmingway standing in the doorway still distraught and hesitating.  Nor did the young man recognize the delicacy of Jules’ leave-taking until he had unstrapped his portmanteau and found himself alone, free to make his toilet, unembarrassed by company.  But even then he would have preferred the rough companionship of the miners in the common dormitory of the general store to this intrusion upon the half-civilization of the women, their pitiable little comforts and secret makeshifts.  His disgust of his own indecision which brought him there naturally recoiled in the direction of his host and hostesses, and after a hurried ablution, a change of linen, and an attempt to remove the stains of travel from his clothes, he strode out impatiently into the open air again.

It was singularly mild even for the season.  The southwest trades blew softly, and whispered to him of San Francisco and the distant Pacific, with its long, steady swell.  He turned again to the overflowed Flat beneath him, and the sluggish yellow water that scarcely broke a ripple against the walls of the half-submerged cabins.  And this was the water for whose going down they were waiting with an immobility as tranquil as the waters themselves!  What marvelous incompetency,—­or what infinite patience!  He knew, of course, their expected compensation in this “ground sluicing” at Nature’s own hand; the long rifts in the banks of the creek which so often showed “the color” in the sparkling scales of river gold disclosed by the action of the water; the heaps of reddish mud left after its subsidence around the walls of the cabins,—­a deposit that often contained a treasure a dozen times more valuable than the cabin itself!  And then he heard behind him a laugh, a short and panting breath, and turning, beheld a young woman running towards him.

In his first astounded sight of her, in her limp nankeen sunbonnet, thrown back from her head by the impetus of her flight, he saw only too much hair, two much white teeth, too much eye-flash, and, above all,—­as it appeared to him,—­too much confidence in the power of these qualities.  Even as she ran, it seemed to him that she was pulling down ostentatiously the rolled-up sleeves of her pink calico gown over her shapely arms.  I am inclined to think that the young gentleman’s temper was at fault, and his conclusion hasty; a calmer observer would have detected nothing of this in her frankly cheerful voice.  Nevertheless, her evident pleasure in the meeting seemed to him only obtrusive coquetry.