The party had been marching for about an hour when they were met by three other Kalmucks, tramping wearily up the track on foot. Lawrence recognized them as miners. They had either not been furnished with horses by the advanced guard beyond the mine, or had had their steeds shot under them during the scamper in the darkness. Nurla Bai gave these hungry men a portion of the provisions that were still left, and they turned about and marched with the rest down-stream. The journey was continued until the growing darkness rendered further advance impossible. Mooring the raft to a tree on the bank, the men prepared to camp for the night, on a moss-covered space just above. Lawrence was lifted from the horse; his feet were again tied; and he was laid in the centre of the encampment. The horses were tethered in a copse hard by, and when a fire had been lighted a few yards northward of the bivouac, the men disposed themselves in a wide circle about their prisoner, and devoted themselves to the remnants of the provisions. No one offered Lawrence a share--a lack of courtesy which did not trouble him. No one spoke to him; but there was no charm in their conversation. They scarcely even looked at him; he suffered nothing from their neglect. He wished they would not eat so noisily; and when, having gobbled the last scraps of the food intended for Major Endicott and his party, they sat with their knees up, and chattered across him in their rasping voices, he felt that no one could be said to have a complete experience of the minor troubles of life who had not been an enforced companion of Kalmucks. A great deal of what they said was incomprehensible to him, but he caught a phrase now and then that interested him in spite of himself. One concerned his uncle. Nurla Bai was apparently relating, for the benefit of the strangers from the north, the doughty deeds he had recently performed. Among them he ranked the shooting of the Englishman who had been his employer. From what he said, Lawrence gathered that the disappearance of Mr. Appleton was as great a disappointment to the miners as to himself. They joked about it, however; Nurla Bai became facetious as he described the consternation of the fishes as they beheld the body of an Englishman, strange monster, sinking into their midst. It was fortunate that Lawrence did not understand the idiomatic beastliness with which the man depicted the gruesome feast then celebrated on the stony bottom of the river.