And still the pick clangs on in that dark, damp tunnel that is always dripping, dripping, dripping, where it looks out at the glaring day, as if in eternal tears for the wasted life within. Yet now there is hope. New life has been infused into this old camp of late years. The tide is flowing in. The placer mines have perished and passed into history. But there is a new industry discovered. It is quartz mining--the very thing that this old man has given his life to establish. And it is this that has kept the old man up, alive, for the past few years. He is now certain that he will strike it yet. Is there some one waiting still, far away? We do not know. He does not know now. Years and years ago, utterly discouraged, yet mechanically keeping on, he ceased to write. But now these two new lives here have ran into his. If he could only strike it now! If he could only strike it for them! It is mid-winter. The three are almost starving. Old Forty-nine has been prudent, cautious, careful of the two helpless waifs thrown into his hands. Could he, old, broken, destitute, friendless, stand up boldly between the man-hunters and these children? Impossible. And so it is that Dosson and Emens are not strangers at the old man's cabin now, hateful as is their presence there to all. They are allowed to come and go. And Dosson pays court to Carrie. They ply the old man with drink. The poor, broken, brave old miner, still dreams and hopes that he will strike it yet--and then! Sometimes he starts up in his sleep and strikes out with his bony hands--as if to expel them from his cabin and keep Carrie safe, sacred, pure. Then he sinks back with a groan, and Carrie bends over him and her great eyes fill with tears. CHAPTER V. THE CAPTURE. _O, the mockery of pity! Weep with fragrant handkerchief, In pompous luxury of grief, Selfish, hollow-hearted city?_ _O these money-getting times! What's a heart for? What's a hand, But to seize and shake the land, Till it tremble for its crimes?_ Midnight, and the mighty trees knock their naked arms together, and creak and cry wildly in the wind. In Forty-nine's cabin, by a flickering log-fire, Carrie sits alone. The wind howls horribly, the door creaks, and the fire snaps wickedly; the wind roars--now the roar of a far-off sea, and now it smites the cabin in shocks, and sifts and shakes the snow through the shingle. The girl draws her tattered blanket tighter about her, and sits a little closer to the fire. Now there is a sudden, savage gust of wind, wilder, fiercer than before, and a sheet of snow sifts in through a crack in the door, and dances over the floor. "What a storm!" exclaims the girl, as she rises up, looks about, and then takes the blanket from her shoulders and stuffs it in the crack by the door.