She sat for a long while gazing intently at the gold, which, like a crystal ball, held for her varied reflections. Then, recalling the exigencies of the kitchen, she hurried abruptly away. Her thoughts wheeled about Jason Burrage in a confusion of all the impressions she had ever had of him. But try as she might she could not picture the present man as a part of her life in Cottarsport; she could not see herself married to him, although that event waited just beyond today. She set her lips in a straight line, a fixed purpose gave her courage in place of the timidity inspired by Jason's opulent strangeness--she couldn't allow herself to be turned aside for a moment from the way of righteousness. The gods of mammon, however they might blackly assault her spirit, should be confounded. ”... hide me Till the storm of life is past.” She sang in a high quavering voice. There was a stir beyond--surely Jason wasn't back so soon; but it was Jem. “What's on the table here?” he called. “You let that be,” she cried back in a panic at having left the gift so exposed. “That's gold dust; Jason brought it, two thousand dollars' worth.” A prolonged whistle followed her announcement. Jem appeared with the buckskin bag in his hand. “Why, here's two yawls right in my hand,” he asserted. “Mind one thing, Jem,” she went on, “he's coming back for supper, and I won't have you and Rhoda at him about boats and singing the minute he's in the house.” Rhoda, with exclamations, and then Hester, inspected the gold. “I'd slave five years for that,” the latter stated, “and then hardly get it; and here you, have it for nothing.” “You'll get the good of it too, Hester,” Olive told her. “I'll just work for what I get,” she replied fiercely. “I won't take a penny from Jason, Olive Stanes; you can't hold that over me, and the sooner you both know it the better.” “You ought to pray to be saved from pride.” “I don't ask benefits from any one,” Hester stoutly observed. “Hester----” Olive commenced, scandalized, but she stopped at Jason's entrance. “Hester she wanted a share of the gold,” Jem declared with a light in his slow gaze, “and Olive was cursing at her.” “Lots more,” said Jason Burrage, “buckets full.” In spite of the efforts of every one to be completely at ease the supper was unavoidably stiff. But when Jason had lighted one of his blunt cigars, and begun a vivid description of western life, the Staneses were transported by the marvels following one upon another: a nugget had been picked up over a foot long, it weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, and realized forty-three thousand dollars. “Why, fifty and seventy-five lumps were common,” he asserted. “At Ford's Bar a man took out seven hundred dollars a day for near a month. Another found seventeen thousand dollars in a gutter two or three feet deep and not a hundred yards long.