The three men sitting on the earth floor, before the fire, which afforded the only light in the place, were unkempt, unwashed and altogether about the roughest-looking savages since the prehistoric ages. Yet they were three as different men as could be found anywhere. The first was perhaps the very tallest man ever seen outside of a show, grandly proportioned, with a fine head, fine face, clear, blue eyes, and yellow hair that flowed to his shoulders, and a yellow beard that fell to his bosom. He was clothed in a buckskin coat trimmed with fur, now much the worse for wear, and buckskin leggings and buffalo-hide boots. In a word, this Hercules was our old friend, Samson Longman. The second was a medium-sized and elderly man, with a thin, red face, red beard and a bald head. He was clothed in a coarse, gray shirt, duck trousers, a nondescript jacket, and many wrappings of sackcloth and sage grass around his feet and ankles, by way of boots. He was our old acquaintance, Andrew Quin. The third was a slight yet muscular youth, with clear, bright complexion, dark gray eyes and dark brown hair, a mocking nose and a laughing mouth. He wore a coarse, red flannel shirt, duck trousers, tucked into hide boots, a knit-woolen blouse, and battered felt hat. Of course, he was young Michael Man. All three of the men lived together like friends in this hut. This evening they were all very grave, not to say gloomy. Old Dandy Quin, sitting flat upon the ground and engaged in unwinding the strips of sacking from his tired feet, was the first to break a silence that had continued some time. “I’m gettin’ tired of this yere,” he grumbled. “Here we’ve been more’n two months working like mules, and never got a gleam o’ this yere moonlight. It’s moon-calves we are, all on us. Ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun we’d ’a’ starved! that’s what we would—’a’ starved! We never had no luck nowhere! Leastways, I never had! I’ve been nigh twenty years slaving in the mines, digging in the bowels of the yeth, working hard and living harder, and running like a luny after a jack-o’-lantern, from one grand discov’ry to another, but never got no more but hard work and harder living out of any on ’em, and now I’m sixty years old come next Martinmas, and I’m gettin’ tired on it,” he concluded, flinging his rags aside and caressing his poor feet. “Dandy, ye poor ould craychur, haven’t ye pit a cint itself, nowhere?” questioned Mike in a sympathetic tone. “Oh, jest eleven hund’ed dollar in the savings bank at Sacramento, and that I hev saved up, dollar be dollar, in the last twenty years, a-working hard an’ the—Regiment hard, and a-starving and a-stinting of meself to do it! And since here we have come to this Silver Moon Mine it hev been all loss and no gain! And as I said before, we’d ’a’ starved to death ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun. And now he is going back on us!” concluded Dandy in an injured tone and with a look of reproach at the giant.