The moon was rising behind the eastern mountain when he extinguished the candle and went out. Below lay the chaotic construction camp buried in silence and in darkness save for the lighted windows of the dinkey. He was not quite ready to go back to Adams, and after making a round of the camp and bidding the engine watchman keep a sharp lookout against a possible night surprise, he set out to walk over the newly-laid track of the day. Another half-hour had elapsed, and a waning moon was clearing the topmost crags of Pacific Peak when he came out on the high embankment opposite the Rosemary, having traversed the entire length of the lateral loop and inspected the trestle at the gulch head by the light of a blazing spruce-branch. The station with its two one-car trains, and the shacks of the little mining-camp beyond, lay shimmering ghost-like in the new-born light of the moon. The engine of the sheriff's car was humming softly with a note like the distant swarming of bees, and from the dancehall in Argentine the snort of a trombone and the tinkling clang of a cracked piano floated out upon the frosty night air. Winton turned to go back. The windows of the Rosemary were all dark, and there was nothing to stay for. So he thought, at all events; but if he had not been musing abstractedly upon things widely separated from his present surroundings, he might have remarked two tiny stars of lantern-light high on the placer ground above the embankment; or, failing the sight, he might have heard the dull, measured _slumph_ of a churn-drill burrowing deep in the frozen earth of the slope. As it was, a pair of brown eyes blinded him, and the tones of a voice sweeter than the songs of Oberon's sea-maid filled his ears. Wherefore he neither saw nor heard; and taking the short cut across the mouth of the lateral gulch back to camp, he boarded the dinkey and went to bed without disturbing Adams. The morning of the day to come broke clear and still, with the stars paling one by one at the pointing finger of the dawn, and the frost-rime lying thick and white like a snowfall of erect and glittering needles on iron and steel and wood. Obedient to orders, the bridge-builders were getting out their hand-car at the construction camp, the wheels shrilling merrily on the frosted rails, and the men stamping and swinging their arms to start the sluggish night-blood. Suddenly, like the opening gun of a battle, the dull rumble of a mighty explosion trembled upon the still air, followed instantly by a sound as of a passing avalanche. Winton was out and running up the track before the camp was fairly aroused. What he saw when he gained the hither side of the lateral gulch was a sight to make a strong man weep. A huge landslide, starting from the frozen placer ground high up on the western promontory, had swept every vestige of track and embankment into the deep bed of the creek at a point precisely opposite Mr. Somerville Darrah's private car.